LONDON, May 22, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) --

• Collaboration brings together R3’s leading private enterprise blockchain with Solana’s high performance public mainnet
  
  
• Drives institutional adoption of public blockchain networks, capitalizing on greater regulatory clarity and growing institutional demand for tokenized real-world assets (RWAs)
  
  
• Announcement marks new strategic direction for R3, signalling its leadership in driving the convergence of public and private networks to unlock the next era of internet capital markets
  
  
• Enables regulated financial institutions to directly access the speed and scale of Solana for broader asset distribution, enhanced liquidity, and a decisive step in bringing TradFi to DeFi
  

{{DATELINECITY_DATE_GLOBENEWSWIRE_BUG}R3 and Solana Foundation today announce a strategic collaboration to bring regulated financial institutions and their real-world assets onto Solana. It will deliver the first enterprise-grade, permissioned consensus service offered to the public directly on a Layer 1 network. This brings the institutional TradFi and DeFi worlds into true convergence, marrying the unparalleled reach of R3 into the TradFi ecosystem with the scale, liquidity, and innovation of internet capital markets. As the world’s most used public blockchain, the Solana blockchain offers unmatched performance, low fees, and a vibrant global ecosystem – making it the ideal foundation for the next generation of regulated digital finance.

R3 has invited Lily Liu, President of the Solana Foundation, to R3’s Board of Directors, marking a strategic 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 high-quality, tokenized assets on public networks.

As the world's largest 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 leading 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 high-quality stablecoins. Unlike traditional interoperability approaches, this comprehensive 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 collaboration will create a consensus service deployed on Solana to enable native interoperability between R3’s existing Corda platform – as well as other private networks – and Solana, bridging the gap between permissioned and public blockchain ecosystems for the first time. 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 robust 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 proven 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. 

“This is a major step forward for the institutional adoption of public blockchain,” said Lily Liu, President of the Solana Foundation. “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 leading post-trade infrastructure provider 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.”   

Media Contacts

Eterna Partners for R3

R3@eternapartners.com

+44 (0)7442 230 170

Solana

press@solana.org

About R3

R3 is the leader in real-world asset (RWA) tokenization and interoperability solutions, driving market digitization and bridging the largest on-chain RWA ecosystem with DeFi.

Corda is an open, permissioned DLT platform powering the tokenization of assets and currencies connecting global markets. Corda enables tokenization with control, providing diverse asset mobility in a secure, trusted environment. 

R3 is committed to progressing financial markets by enabling an open, trusted and advanced digital economy for real-world assets.  

For further information, please visit www.r3.com.

About Solana

Solana is a blockchain built for mass adoption. It's a high performance network that is utilized for a range of use cases, including finance, NFTs, payments, and gaming. Solana operates as a single global state machine, and is open, interoperable and decentralized. For more information, please visit https://solana.com.

About Solana Foundation

The Solana Foundation is a non-profit foundation based in Zug, Switzerland, dedicated to the decentralization, adoption, and security of the Solana network. For more information, please visit https://solana.org/.

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/ae6d91e9-9bb4-4a47-b3e3-7a873993c009