Native data and DeFi structures: how R3 and Solana are transforming institutional markets

The onchain institutional finance landscape is undergoing a radical transformation. R3, after more than a decade dedicated to building blockchain infrastructure for exchanges, financial institutions, and central banks, launched last year a fundamental strategic recalibration: which blockchain architecture truly enables native data of institutional assets to flow onchain efficiently, composably, and liquidly? The answer, according to Todd McDonald, co-founder of R3, involves Solana and a new way of structuring tokenized capital markets.

Why Solana for the native data of institutional finance

The choice of Solana as a strategic foundation is no coincidence. After a thorough evaluation of all major layer one and layer two solutions, R3 recognized that Solana is the most suitable platform to handle the data flows and transactions characteristic of high-performance financial markets. The company described Solana as “the Nasdaq of blockchains,” a network specifically designed for financial markets rather than for general experimentation.

Through its Corda platform, R3 already supports over $10 billion in assets, collaborating with key players such as HSBC, Bank of America, Banca d’Italia, the Monetary Authority of Singapore, Swiss National Bank, Euroclear, SDX, and SBI. The strategic partnership with the Solana Foundation, announced in May 2025 at the Accelerate conference, represents the natural continuation of this commitment to onchain institutional assets.

The Solana DeFi ecosystem has reached over $9 billion in TVL (Total Value Locked), positioning itself among the most dynamic DeFi platforms outside of Ethereum and its Layer 2 solutions. This growth reflects high processing capacity, ultra-low fees, and increasing user engagement on the network. However, the differentiating element is not just technical speed but the ability to structure native data of real assets into composable and fungible onchain formats.

Tokenized data liquidity: the real bottleneck

Contrary to common belief, tokenization itself is not the main unlocking factor for real assets onchain. The true limiting factor is liquidity—namely, how the structured data of these assets can flow, be traded, and recombined within the DeFi ecosystem without losing their native data integrity.

“The core of DeFi is lending and borrowing,” explains McDonald, emphasizing that a turning point will arrive when a tokenized real asset can serve as credible collateral at the same level as native crypto assets. Today, limited liquidity and, in some cases, rigid permission systems discourage DeFi allocators from engaging significantly with these products.

The solution is not to force demand but to start from the existing onchain market appetite. In a cycle characterized by euphoria and contraction, many sophisticated investors seek more stable, less correlated returns outside the crypto markets. R3 aims to bring these assets onchain by structuring them in a native DeFi manner, facilitating access through experienced allocators.

Private credit and trade finance: high-yield assets

R3’s strategy focuses on specific asset categories: private credit and trade finance. These segments are where the yield potential truly captures onchain investor attention.

Private credit, traditionally offering yields around 10%, provides the “headline yield” needed to attract DeFi participants. However, these products must balance yield, liquidity, and composability—a challenge considering that, in traditional markets, private credit often has quarterly or “on-demand” liquidity.

Trade finance presents an even broader opportunity, where supply and demand are highly elastic. As McDonald notes, if DeFi allocators actually focused on trade finance, the supply from the traditional sector could be enormous. The problem is that trade finance remains notoriously opaque: it crosses fragmented jurisdictions, involves customized contracts, and uses non-standard data formats, complicating risk pricing and slowing liquidity scalability despite the market’s massive size.

On the issuer side, R3 is already working with global investment managers and a range of asset owners—from factories to shipping companies—who see tokenization as a new distribution channel and a new model for capital formation. The goal is not to passively replicate traditional products but to redesign them to be fully investable, tradable, and composable onchain, with native chain data as the foundation of the entire ecosystem.

Corda and yield vaults: native structures for institutional data

This strategic vision supports the new Corda Protocol, recently announced, built natively on Solana. The protocol introduces yield vaults backed by real assets, professionally managed, issuing liquid and redeemable vault tokens. Launch is scheduled for the first half of 2026.

The structure is designed to give stablecoin holders access to tokenized debt instruments, funds, and reinsurance-linked securities without sacrificing the liquidity or composability typical of DeFi. Assets available through Corda will be supported by a native protocol liquidity layer, enabling instant swaps of otherwise illiquid or limited-liquidity assets for onchain participants. This unlocks the use of assets as collateral at a massive scale.

The protocol will integrate with leading custodians and lending protocols, fueling lending and leveraged position building. In response to strong initial demand, Corda has already registered over 30,000 pre-registrations.

Bridging the gap between Wall Street and onchain finance

This initiative directly addresses a growing market gap. As DeFi investors move away from purely speculative strategies, demand for stable, diversified, and less correlated yields increases. Although hundreds of billions of dollars in real assets are represented onchain, most institutional-quality yields still require capital to move offchain.

R3’s vision is clear: bridging that gap. “Bringing institutional-quality assets onchain in a way that finally makes sense for DeFi, and bringing offchain capital into onchain markets at scale,” concludes McDonald. With properly structured native data and Solana as the underlying infrastructure, the next trillion dollars in assets can finally find its home onchain.