Enterprise blockchain consortium R3 has announced a strategic partnership with the Solana Foundation, marking a significant pivot to bring institutional-grade yield products onto the Solana blockchain. The initiative, first announced in May 2025 at Solana's Accelerate conference, is the culmination of a year-long strategic reset by R3, which involved evaluating all major layer-1 and layer-2 networks.
R3 co-founder Todd MacDonald explained the firm's decision was grounded in a long-term conviction that all markets will ultimately become onchain. "We think Solana is the best network for that future," he said, pointing to its structure, throughput, and trading-first design. R3 came to see Solana as "the Nasdaq of blockchains," a venue purpose-built for high-performance capital markets.
The partnership leverages R3's Corda blockchain platform, which currently supports more than $10 billion in assets and works with major financial institutions including HSBC, Bank of America, the Bank of Italy, the Monetary Authority of Singapore, the Swiss National Bank, Euroclear, SDX, and SBI.
The core focus is on tokenizing real-world assets (RWA), specifically targeting private credit and trade finance markets, which represent multi-trillion dollar opportunities. MacDonald noted that returns around 10% tend to resonate strongly with onchain investors, and these higher-yielding products are needed to attract attention. However, he identified liquidity as the real bottleneck for tokenized RWAs, stating that the breakthrough moment will come when these assets can be treated as credible collateral on equal footing with native crypto assets.
To address this, R3 is launching the Corda Protocol, built natively on Solana, in the first half of 2026. The protocol will introduce professionally curated, real-world-asset-backed yield vaults that issue liquid, redeemable vault tokens. These vaults are designed to give stablecoin holders access to tokenized debt instruments, funds, and reinsurance-linked securities without sacrificing DeFi-style liquidity or composability.
The protocol will feature a native liquidity layer enabling instant swaps out of otherwise illiquid assets and will be integrated with top curators and lending protocols. In a sign of strong early demand, Corda has already received more than 30,000 pre-registrations.
MacDonald framed this effort as a direct response to a growing market gap. As DeFi investors move away from purely speculative strategies, demand is rising for stable, diversified yield uncorrelated with crypto markets. "Our goal is to close that gap," he said. "To bring Wall Street-quality assets onchain in a way that finally makes sense for DeFi, and to bring off chain capital into onchain markets at scale."
