Native architecture of Solana as a foundation for institutional tokenization: R3's strategic bet

R3 has radically shifted its stance in the crypto market, acknowledging that the future of traditional finance lies not just in digitizing assets but in their deep integration with blockchain. This vision is inherently embodied in a strategic partnership with the Solana Foundation, announced at the Accelerate conference in May 2025. After more than a decade of developing infrastructure for exchanges, banks, and central banks, R3 emphasizes: the true revolution will not start with tokenization as such, but with providing liquidity for these assets.

From Ethereum to Solana: choosing a platform for a billion dollars

Todd McDonald, co-author of R3, explained the logic behind this choice with a simple thesis: the company analyzed all leading and secondary blockchain networks, assessing where institutional capital markets would migrate. The result was unequivocal. While Ethereum remains the leader in total value locked (TVL) within DeFi, maintaining deep liquidity and a broader developer base, Solana has positioned itself as the “Nasdaq among blockchains” — a network specifically optimized not for experimentation but for high-performance financial operations.

Solana offers structural advantages critical for institutional players: extremely high throughput, ultra-low fees, and an architecture focused on trading. The Solana DeFi ecosystem now holds over $9 billion in locked assets, making it one of the fastest-growing platforms outside of Ethereum and its Layer 2 solutions. The model chosen by Solana has fueled explosive growth in transaction volumes and user engagement, although Ethereum still maintains leadership in total value and the largest share of non-native institutional assets. This native division reflects different development strategies: Ethereum focuses on diversity, Solana on performance.

Liquidity as the real problem: why tokenization is only the first step

Here arises a key paradox highlighted by McDonald: most industry discussions focus on the process of tokenization itself, i.e., representing real assets (stocks, bonds, private loans) as digital tokens for trading on blockchain networks. However, the real bottleneck is liquidity. “The pulse of DeFi is loans and lending,” he emphasized.

Today, hundreds of billions of dollars of real assets are already represented on the blockchain, but most profitable institutional investments still require capital to remain off-chain. Low liquidity and, in some cases, strict regulatory restrictions discourage DeFi investors from actively working with these products. A breakthrough will occur when tokenized real assets can function as reliable collateral on equal footing with native crypto assets, opening access to loans and credit in DeFi.

R3 is not trying to artificially create demand. Instead, the company starts where interest already exists: in finding DeFi investors a more stable, diversified income stream less correlated with crypto markets. “We are trying to bring these assets on-chain and package them in a way typical for DeFi,” McDonald explained.

Focus on private lending and trade finance

To attract serious investors, returns must be attractive. R3 prioritizes products with higher profitability, with private lending becoming the main focus. Yields around 10% traditionally resonate with on-chain investors. However, these products must balance three dimensions: profitability, liquidity, and composability — a challenging task, considering that private credit on traditional markets often has very limited liquidity (often available only quarterly).

Beyond private lending, R3 sees massive potential in trade finance. In this market, demand and supply are highly elastic. “If DeFi allocators truly focus on trade finance, the supply from the traditional world is enormous,” McDonald emphasizes, pointing to the market scale and the possibility of sustainable profit.

Trade finance has historically suffered from opacity: fragmented jurisdictions, individual contracts, uneven data standards — all complicating risk assessment, asset standardization, and liquidity scaling. Blockchain solutions can address these issues.

Corda: native liquidity for institutional assets

R3 is already working with well-known investment managers and a long list of asset owners — from manufacturing companies to shipping firms, which see tokenization as a new channel for capital distribution. The goal is not just to reproduce off-chain products but to redesign them for the on-chain world: investability, tradability, and composability.

In December 2025, R3 announced Corda — a protocol built natively on Solana, representing a fundamentally new approach. The protocol is organized around professionally curated safes filled with income-generating assets, issuing liquid, buyout-safe safe-tokens. The launch is scheduled for the first half of 2026.

Corda’s architecture provides stablecoin holders access to tokenized debt instruments, funds, and securities (including reinsurance assets) without losing liquidity or composability in DeFi style. Assets available through Corda will have support from a protocol-native liquidity layer, enabling instant exchange of traditionally illiquid assets for on-chain investors. This opens the prospect of large-scale use of these assets as collateral for loans.

The protocol will integrate with leading curators and lending protocols to support loans and build leveraged positions, McDonald explained.

Preliminary interest and the way forward

Corda has already attracted significant attention since its announcement. The protocol received over 30,000 pre-registrations, indicating deep demand for such solutions within the DeFi and traditional finance communities.

R3’s vision stems from a simple observation: with billions flowing into crypto solutions and DeFi, the investor base is evolving. The market is shifting from purely speculative strategies back to seeking stable, diversified income that is uncorrelated with crypto cycles. While some real assets are already represented on-chain, the true revolution will begin when Wall Street–class assets become instantly accessible to DeFi investors and when off-chain capital massively flows into on-chain markets.

R3’s strategy on Solana is not just a single bet; it’s a recognition that this native vision of the future of finance is already being realized. Combining deep expertise in traditional finance with the architecture of the most productive blockchain can change not only the crypto industry but the entire investment world.