Lonzo Sheffield Introduction New to DAML and Loving It

Hi everyone,

I’m Lonzo, a consultant with deep experience in mortgage lending compliance (TRID, regulatory reporting) and a background in systematic trading. I’m starting my Daml/Canton learning journey and plan to contribute back to this community as I go.

Why Canton: I’ve been tracking the institutional DeFi space and Canton’s approach to privacy + atomic settlement + regulatory compatibility is exactly what traditional finance actually needs. The Broadridge DLR numbers ($280B daily volume) caught my attention.

What I’m building toward: Developer tooling and starter kits, particularly for repo and collateral management workflows. My hypothesis is that the ecosystem needs more accessible on-ramps for developers coming from other backgrounds (Solidity, traditional backend, etc.).

I’m also interested in exploring an automated KYC on Canton.

My learning plan:

  1. Daml Fundamentals → Contract Developer certification path

  2. Canton Core Academy

  3. Quickstart toolkit exploration

  4. Build a “Canton Repo Starter Kit” with working Daml templates + React frontend

How I’ll contribute: I’m documenting my learning publicly—LinkedIn posts, GitHub repos, and posts here. Every place the docs confused me, every workaround I discover, every “aha” moment. Happy to share drafts for feedback.

My ask: What resources did you wish existed when you started with Daml? Any gotchas I should watch for coming from a non-Haskell background? I’ve done some functional programming but Daml’s approach to authorization and contract visibility is new territory.

Looking forward to learning from this community.

— Lonzo

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