A consortium of prominent banks and financial firms is accelerating efforts to tokenize global stock and bond markets through Solana Blockchain, a blockchain platform widely recognized for hosting popular memecoins linked to Donald and Melania Trump.
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| Major Banks Strike Strategic Deal to Adopt Solana Blockchain |
Major banks are moving towards the Solana blockchain.
R3, a UK-based blockchain software provider that collaborates with several leading financial organizations, recently announced a partnership with the Solana Foundation. This agreement will enable R3 and its clients to leverage Solana’s blockchain infrastructure. In return, Solana Crypto Foundation will make a strategic investment in R3, and its president, Lily Liu, will join R3’s board of directors.
Currently, R3 manages approximately $10 billion in tokenized assets across its networks, serving notable clients such as Euroclear, HSBC, Bank of America, Italy’s central bank, and the Monetary Authority of Singapore.
Why is the financial sector choosing Solana to tokenize assets?
This collaboration highlights the growing trend among major financial players—including banks, asset managers, and exchanges—to experiment with tokenized securities like shares and investment funds recorded on public digital ledgers.
Advocates of tokenisation argue that placing assets on blockchains enhances market accessibility for investors, accelerates settlement processes, releases collateral, and reduces administrative overhead.
Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, has described tokenisation as the "next generation" of market innovation. Since the start of the year, BlackRock’s tokenized money market fund has attracted $2.8 billion, quadrupling its size as investors increasingly seek interest-bearing digital securities.
R3 and Solana Foundation to Partner to Promote Tokenization
The R3-Solana alliance also marks a significant milestone for Solana as it aims to challenge Ethereum’s dominance in powering crypto-based financial market infrastructures.
Ethereum has long promoted itself as the “grown-up” network of the crypto space but has faced difficulties scaling up to handle the volume and speed required for securities trading and payments. Solana, meanwhile, markets itself as a faster, more cost-effective platform better suited to large-scale financial applications.
Although BlackRock and Franklin Templeton have already adopted Solana for their tokenized money market funds, the blockchain is still popularly associated with meme coins, including those launched by former US President Donald Trump and his wife earlier this year.
Jens Hachmeister, head of issuer services and new digital markets at Clearstream, expressed optimism about the future: “The convergence of public and private blockchains is no longer a future promise — it’s happening now. This represents a generational shift in the movement of value.”
This deal represents a strategic shift for R3, which has spent the last decade focusing on tokenising securities using private ledgers shared among a select group of institutions.
R3’s proprietary Corda private blockchain will now be integrated with Solana to enhance transaction speeds. However, clients retain the choice to keep their assets on the private Corda network or migrate them onto the public Solana blockchain.
David Rutter, CEO of R3, noted the rapidly evolving blockchain landscape: “The regulatory environment has changed significantly, and public blockchains have matured.”
Financially, R3’s UK subsidiary recorded a £54.6 million loss in the year ending November 2023, up from £35.2 million the previous year, although revenues grew by 57% to £12 million.
Lily Liu emphasized that R3’s decision to adopt Solana for its regulated financial network validates the potential of crypto technologies: “Public blockchains have been designed to scale. They offer global distribution for financial assets.”