In May, R3 announced its collaboration with the Solana Foundation, signalling the first convergence of both public and private blockchain ecosystems and of TradFi and DeFi markets.
Now, to accomplish our mission of bringing the next trillion dollars of real-world assets on-chain, we’re launching R3 Labs, the institutional gateway to DeFi that streamlines RWA issuance and deployment, and the R3 Solana Toolkit, a service combining R3’s decade of proven in-house expertise in building compliant solutions with access to a suite of built-in solutions from our trusted partners on the Solana network.
If you’ve been following R3, you know that our collaboration with Solana is the culmination of a years-long market evolution. Institutions and regulators alike have been steadily recognizing the utility of blockchain networks. What began as small scale pilots on private networks has now become a groundswell of public and private belief in blockchain networks as the future of financial markets, ready to bring greater transparency, security, and efficiency to existing operational systems.
R3 has over a decade of experience bringing regulated financial institutions on-chain – and now over $17bn in real-world assets (RWAs) already tokenized across our platforms to show for it. Our team understands the challenges faced by regulated institutions seeking to leverage blockchains: they want privacy, security, and control, but also scalability and distributive flexibility. Corda remains a cornerstone of our offering, and we are proud of the trust it has earned across global institutions. Building on that foundation, R3 Labs is pursuing a broader ambition: driving the next one trillion dollars of real-world assets onto the Solana ecosystem.
Under the leadership of Richard G. Brown – a recognised industry authority on distributed ledger systems and R3’s Founding Chief Product and Technology Officer, responsible for designing both Corda and R3’s integration with Solana – R3 Labs leverages the success, proven privacy, and control solutions of R3’s Corda to streamline regulated RWA issuance on Solana.
As part of this initiative, we are proud to announce the launch of the R3 Solana Toolkit, a service combining access to a curated selection of Solana’s most advanced capabilities, privacy features and tooling with hands-on advisory support from R3’s expert team that enables institutions to design, configure, and deploy on Solana at speed and with confidence. This offering allows institutions to capitalize on the benefits of deploying RWAs at scale, including direct settlement against Solana-native stablecoins, while providing access to regulatory-compliant yield vaults and secure securities lending protocols for new revenue generation opportunities.
Solana’s token 2022 offer standardized, pre-audited compliance features. This stands in contrast to the token standard approaches taken on first generation networks, where standard interfaces are available, but each project has to build and audit its own implementations. Token 2022 standards let issuers leverage a range of features that support institutional regulatory requirements, including limits on who can issue, hold or transact with tokenized assets and balance encryption to preserve wallet privacy. Another key advantage of Solana is its transparent validator leader schedule, which lets institutions see in advance who will produce the next block and route transactions directly to that validator, ensuring fees are captured by approved parties.
The result is a unique, future-proof solution that streamlines RWA issuance to meet today’s regulatory, operational, and security standards, while offering the flexibility of open access to Solana and R3’s expert team. We are enabling institutions to leverage Solana’s built-in compliance and privacy features, without the cost or complexity of building bespoke system architecture. With no licensing fees and minimal onboarding time, the R3 Solana Toolkit provides institution-grade privacy and security alongside the unmatched performance of the Solana network. (For more on why R3 chose Solana for this collaboration, read Richard G. Brown’s blog, The Technical Case for Solana.)
R3’s ecosystem is already the world’s largest live network of TradFi blockchain platforms, powering tens of millions of transactions each month and securing tens of billions in assets across its live networks. Now, it’s time to deploy these assets on the world’s most performant and scalable blockchain, opening access to institutions that have yet to harness public chains in their strategies. This year, Solana is on track to power $10tn in transfer volumes, and the network is built to scale. Already, tokenized asset AUM is up 140% this year. In August of this year, Solana handled approximately 2.9bn transactions and recorded an all-time high of perpetual futures trading volume at $43.8bn. Trading platforms earned $85mn in revenue on Solana while the network recorded $148mn in app revenue, all while retaining a median fee of $0.00 and the lowest fee volatility of any network.
With industry heavyweights like J.P. Morgan, Franklin Templeton, and BlackRock already putting this strategy to work, the time is now to take advantage of public blockchain ecosystems. Through R3 Labs and the R3 Solana Toolkit, institutions can now access R3’s trusted advisory services and Solana’s built-in compliance solutions to translate business use cases into real-world deployments quickly and effectively.
With comprehensive regulatory solutions, validator transparency, and seamless integration into Solana’s institutional ecosystem, our Toolkit makes it simple for institutions to build solutions for issuing, securing, and scaling digital assets with confidence. We’re reducing legacy complexity and operational costs, de-risking adoption, and accelerating time-to-market to empower TradFi institutions to issue and scale RWAs faster than ever. Are you ready?
