# Settlement and composability A zone is not a walled garden. Money can leave it for any protocol on the host chain, and it can move directly to another institution's zone. That second one is the interesting one: two institutions can settle between each other in real time, through neutral public rails, without sharing a ledger and without seeing each other's books.  The mechanic is simple. The representation is burned in the sending zone, the canonical asset is released on the host chain, and it is deposited into the receiving zone and minted to the recipient there. The host chain is the settlement layer in the middle, the locked canonical asset preserves the singleness of money, and a proof on each side enforces honest accounting. This is the primitive behind private interbank settlement. Two banks that compete hard and trust each other minimally can still settle instantly, because they never have to agree to a shared chain where they watch each other's flows. No consortium ledger, no shared surveillance. :::note From your side, settling to another zone looks exactly like a withdrawal whose destination is a virtual address in that zone. The receiving operator sees a deposit credited to one of their accounts. See the [Settle between zones](/guides/settle-between-zones) guide. :::