R3 and Solana Foundation announce a collaboration to bring regulated financial institutions and their real-world assets onto Solana.
It will deliver enterprise-grade, “permissioned consensus service offered to the public on a Layer 1 network.”
This brings the institutional TradFi and DeFi worlds “into convergence, marrying the reach of R3 into the TradFi ecosystem with the scale, liquidity, and innovation of internet capital markets.”
As one of the “most used” public blockchain, the Solana blockchain offers performance, “low fees, and a global ecosystem – making it the foundation for regulated digital finance.”
R3 has invited Lily Liu, President of the Solana Foundation, to R3’s Board of Directors, marking “a shift for R3 that unites the strengths of public and permissioned blockchains.”
Solana and R3 will bring regulated assets onto a public blockchain “at a time when the RWA sector is at a pivotal juncture: regulatory tailwinds are spurring investor confidence in digital assets, financial institutions are becoming increasingly comfortable with leveraging public networks, and the DeFi sector is maturing.”
These forces are driving growing demand “for tokenized assets on public networks.”
As the world’s collection of permissioned RWA networks, with over $10 billion in regulated assets on-chain “across its platforms, the R3 ecosystem is ideally positioned to meet this demand.”
R3’s Corda has the most live, in-production “use cases and millions of transactions processed daily by institutional players.”
Integrating with Solana’s blockchain will “enable these assets to flow to meet the growing demand on public networks, and unlock new settlement options across these ecosystems, including using stablecoins.”
Unlike traditional interoperability approaches, this integration means private transactions on Corda can be “confirmed directly on Solana mainnet, inheriting the network’s performance and security, and enabling true transactional atomicity.”
The collab will create a “consensus service deployed on Solana to enable native interoperability between R3’s Corda platform – as well as other private networks – and Solana, bridging the gap between permissioned and public blockchain ecosystems.”
This will enable regulated financial institutions – “including banks, financial market infrastructure providers, and asset managers – to fully harness the openness and efficiency of Solana without re-writing their applications or compromising on compliance, security, or asset control.”
R3 chose Solana as its public Layer-1 substrate and the “basis for its new consensus service following an extensive evaluation and technical review of decentralized protocols, selecting Solana for its low transaction fees, speed, scalability, as well as the Solana ecosystem’s developer community, and relationships with numerous regulated financial institutions, including Blackrock, Franklin Templeton, and Hamilton Lane which have all deployed regulated assets on the network.”
Critically, this collaboration simplifies the complexity of managing RWAs on public blockchains – bringing Corda’s strengths in “identity, privacy, and compliance to a public and permissioned environment.”
This allows traditional financial institutions to “operate with the same control and clarity they expect from enterprise-grade infrastructure, while unlocking the scale and flexibility of a public network.”
Lily Liu, President of the Solana Foundation said:
“R3’s decision to bring its regulated financial network onto Solana is powerful validation that public blockchains have reached institutional readiness. With Solana’s unmatched performance, enterprise-grade permissioning, and growing roster of regulated assets, we’re not just witnessing convergence between TradFi and DeFi – we’re enabling it. This collaboration signifies that the future of capital markets will be built on public infrastructure. We’re thrilled that the Solana ecosystem is leading the way.”
David E. Rutter, Founder and CEO of R3 commented:
“We’ve never pursued blockchain for its own sake – our mission is to solve real financial problems. After years of laying the groundwork, R3 is ready to bring our experience and our network of regulated financial institutions towards a new public future with one of the best and most trusted public ecosystems – Solana. This is more than a milestone; it’s a strategic realignment for the entire industry. We know DeFi isn’t coming to TradFi, so it’s up to us to build the connective infrastructure that links these two ecosystems. This is about adapting to deliver real-world utility, institutional-grade readiness, and shaping the long-term future of regulated markets.”
Clearstream, a post-trade infrastructure provider claiming to be “at the forefront of digitizing financial markets, is a long-standing user of R3’s Corda which underpins its digital collateral solution.”
Jens Hachmeister, Head of Issuer Services & New Digital Markets at Clearstream, commented:
“Tokenization isn’t just about digitizing assets – it’s about building scalable, global infrastructure where real-world assets can interact directly and securely, no matter where investors are located. The convergence of public and private blockchains is no longer a future promise – it’s happening now. This is a generational shift in how value moves, and a compelling moment for any institution looking to enter the crypto space. We’re excited for what’s ahead.”