R3 aims to mobilize one trillion dollars of assets on Solana

R3, the blockchain infrastructure company, has completed a significant strategic transformation, positioning Solana as the core foundation of its vision to bring one trillion dollars of institutional assets fully onchain in the coming years. After ten years dedicated to building infrastructure for central banks, financial institutions, and stock markets, R3 has radically reconsidered its business model, asking a crucial question: how can clients truly transfer assets on blockchain effectively and sustainably?

From a decade of infrastructure to a new focus: R3’s transformation

About a year ago, R3 launched a complete strategic reset. According to Todd McDonald, the company’s co-founder, this process coincided with an in-depth assessment of the entire global blockchain landscape. “We basically reached out to all the layer one and layer two projects to understand where the institutional capital markets would naturally migrate,” McDonald explained in an interview with CoinDesk.

This research led to a discovery that changed the company’s course: a strategic partnership with the Solana Foundation, officially announced in May 2025 during the Accelerate conference. The decision is based on a fundamental belief that drives R3’s vision: all financial markets will eventually become onchain markets. “We firmly believe that Solana is the best network for that future,” McDonald stated. Through its Corda blockchain platform, R3 already supports over $10 billion in assets and collaborates with global partners of excellence including HSBC, Bank of America, the Bank of Italy, the Monetary Authority of Singapore, the Swiss National Bank, Euroclear, SDX, and SBI.

Why Solana is the Nasdaq of blockchains for institutional markets

R3 began to see Solana not as a speculative experiment but as “the Nasdaq of blockchains” – a platform explicitly designed for high-performance financial markets rather than for general experimentation. This vision reflects specific technical characteristics: network structure, processing capacity, and trading-oriented architecture that Solana naturally offers.

In the current DeFi landscape, activity remains concentrated on a limited number of networks. Ethereum continues to dominate in total value locked (TVL), reflecting its deep liquidity, extensive developer ecosystem, and established institutional adoption over time. However, Solana has emerged as one of the fastest-growing DeFi platforms, benefiting from ultra-fast processing, near-zero fees, and expanding user engagement. Solana’s DeFi ecosystem currently holds over $9 billion in TVL, positioning it among the leading networks outside of Ethereum and its Layer 2 solutions, even competing with the combined DeFi activity of Ethereum’s main Layer 2s at times.

Solana’s model has significantly increased onchain transaction volumes and active wallets, especially for high-frequency trading and time-critical applications. Yet, Ethereum still maintains overall dominance in TVL and the largest share of institutional assets. For R3, this dynamic presents an opportunity: to position itself as the gateway through which world-class institutional assets migrate to Solana.

Tokenization and liquidity: the true heartbeat of onchain finance

Tokenization – the process of representing real-world assets like stocks, bonds, and receivables as tradable digital tokens on blockchain networks – has attracted growing interest from traditional financial institutions. However, according to McDonald, tokenization itself is not the ultimate unlock. “Liquidity is the real bottleneck,” he stated clearly. “The heartbeat of DeFi is lending and borrowing – without adequate liquidity, even the best assets remain trapped.”

Today, many tokenized assets suffer from limited liquidity and, in some cases, rigid permission systems that significantly discourage DeFi investors from engaging. A real-world tokenized asset, to be truly effective, must be treated as credible collateral at the same level as native crypto assets. This requires not only sufficient liquidity but also market mechanisms that institutional traders find natural and convenient.

Private credit and trade finance: the next trillions to bring onchain

Since May 2025, R3 has focused intensely on a single problem: how to tokenize the next trillion dollars of assets and bring them onchain in ways that truly work for sophisticated investors. This means much more than issuing simple tokens. It involves redesigning products that onchain allocators want to use and that traditional investors can adopt and grow over time.

McDonald has observed a shift of focus on Solana toward asset allocation and capital formation, moving away from pure speculation. R3 is prioritizing high-yield products, with private credit as a key pillar. “A headline yield is necessary to capture attention,” McDonald emphasized. “Yields around 10% tend to resonate strongly with onchain allocators.” These products must simultaneously balance yield, liquidity, and composability – a challenge considering that private credit liquidity in traditional markets is often quarterly or available only on an “appointment-only” basis.

Beyond private credit, R3 sees a significant opportunity in trade finance. “If DeFi allocators truly focused on trade finance, the supply from the traditional world would be enormous,” McDonald explained. The trade finance market is notoriously fragmented across different jurisdictions, with bespoke contracts and non-uniform data standards, making risk pricing difficult and scaling slow. Despite this complexity, the market size offers sustainable and predictable yields.

On the supply side, R3 already collaborates with world-renowned investment managers and a range of asset owners – from factories to shipping companies – who see tokenization as a new distribution channel and an innovative capital formation model. The goal is not to replicate offline products but to redesign them to be investable, tradable, and natively onchain.

Corda Protocol: how R3 is rebuilding decentralized finance for Wall Street

To realize this vision, R3 has just announced the new Corda Protocol, built natively on Solana. The protocol introduces yield vaults backed by real assets, professionally managed by institutional managers, issuing liquid and redeemable vault tokens. The launch is scheduled for the first half of 2026.

The protocol is designed to give stablecoin holders access to tokenized debt instruments, thematic funds, and reinsurance-linked securities without sacrificing the liquidity or composability features of DeFi. “Assets available through Corda will have a native liquidity layer of the protocol,” McDonald clarified. “This will enable instant swaps of otherwise illiquid or limited-liquidity assets, unlocking widespread use as collateral. The protocol will integrate with leading curators and lending protocols to power lending and leverage strategies.”

In response to strong initial demand, Corda has already received over 30,000 pre-registrations. The strong response reflects a growing market gap. As DeFi investors move away from purely speculative strategies, demand is increasing for stable, diversified yields uncorrelated with crypto markets.

The onchain future: bridging traditional markets and crypto

Although hundreds of billions of dollars in real assets are now represented onchain, most high-quality institutional yields still require capital to move offline into traditional markets. “Our goal is to definitively bridge that gap,” McDonald concluded. “Bringing Wall Street-quality assets onchain in a way that finally makes sense for DeFi, and mobilizing offline capital toward large-scale onchain markets – this is how we will bring the next trillion dollars onchain.”