Solana Becomes R3's Strategic Choice for Stock Tokenization with Dividends and On-Chain Institutional Assets

R3 blockchain infrastructure company has undergone a fundamental repositioning in its business, shifting focus to real-world asset tokenization and onchain capital markets. This strategy leverages Solana as the primary technical foundation, bringing a new perspective on how institutional assets—including semi-annual dividend stocks, private credit, and trade finance instruments—can operate natively within the blockchain ecosystem. This strategic shift comes after R3 conducted a comprehensive evaluation of the blockchain landscape over more than a decade of building infrastructure for exchanges, financial institutions, and central banks.

Why R3 Chose Solana for the Future of Capital Markets

R3’s decision to adopt Solana as its strategic base was not made hastily. Todd McDonald, one of R3’s founders, explained that the company conducted an extensive evaluation by speaking with nearly all existing layer 1 and layer 2 solutions before ultimately settling on the choice at the Accelerate blockchain conference in May 2025.

The reason for choosing Solana lies in its technical characteristics and design philosophy. R3 views Solana not just as a general-purpose blockchain but as the “Nasdaq of blockchain”—a platform specifically designed to support high-performance capital markets rather than as a broad experiment. High throughput, efficient architecture, and a focus on high-speed trading make Solana an ideal candidate to handle the volume of institutional capital market transactions in the future.

McDonald stated that R3’s long-term vision assumes that all markets will eventually become onchain markets. “We believe Solana is the best network for that future,” he said, emphasizing that this shift is not just about technology but about choosing infrastructure capable of supporting the global capital markets transformation.

Liquidity: The Real Barrier to Real-World Asset Tokenization

When discussing real-world asset tokenization, many focus on technical aspects—representing stocks that pay dividends periodically or bonds as tradable digital tokens. However, McDonald argues that the real barrier is liquidity.

“The core of DeFi is lending and borrowing,” McDonald said, emphasizing that a breakthrough moment will come when tokenized real-world assets are accepted as credible collateral, equivalent to native crypto assets. Currently, liquidity is limited—especially for instruments like dividend-paying stocks with structured payment schedules—and in some cases, regulatory licensing restrictions reduce DeFi investors’ interest in participating meaningfully with these products.

This challenge cannot be solved simply by launching more tokens. R3 starts from existing market demand rather than trying to force adoption. Many savvy onchain investors are now seeking more stable yields with less correlation to crypto market volatility. This creates real opportunities for traditional assets that can be packaged natively for DeFi.

Private Credit and Trade Finance: R3’s Target Assets

R3’s asset strategy reflects a focus on instruments offering higher yields. Private credit becomes a key pillar, with a simple yet strategic consideration: “You need high yields to attract attention,” McDonald said. Yields around 10% tend to resonate strongly with onchain investors, creating compelling economic incentives to participate.

However, these products must balance three elements simultaneously: return, liquidity, and composability. This is a serious challenge, given that private credit in traditional markets often has quarterly liquidity schedules or “promise-based” structures, which are difficult to reconcile with DeFi’s expectation of instant exchanges.

Beyond private credit, R3 sees significant opportunities in trade finance, where demand and supply are highly elastic. “If DeFi managers truly focus on trade finance, the supply from the traditional world is enormous,” McDonald explained. The global trade finance market is huge but highly fragmented, involving diverse jurisdictions, bespoke contracts, and inconsistent data standards. Blockchain can address these barriers by providing transparency and standardization needed for more accurate risk assessment and faster liquidity development.

On the issuer side, R3 has partnered with leading asset managers, other asset owners—from factories to shipping companies—who see tokenization as an innovative distribution channel and a new mechanism for capital formation. The goal is not just to mirror traditional products onchain but to redesign them so they can be invested in, traded, and combined natively within the DeFi ecosystem.

Corda Protocol: Yield-Based Vaults for the Solana DeFi Ecosystem

This vision is materialized through the newly announced Corda protocol, built natively on Solana. The protocol introduces yield-backed vaults supported by professionally curated real-world assets and issues liquid, redeemable vault tokens with unprecedented flexibility.

Launching in the first half of 2026, Corda vaults are designed to give stablecoin holders access to tokenized debt instruments, funds, reinsurance-linked securities, and successful assets like dividend-paying stocks, without sacrificing DeFi’s liquidity or composability features.

Through this protocol, available assets will be backed by an underlying layer of liquidity, enabling instant exchange of assets that are typically illiquid or have very limited liquidity. This opens the door for these assets to be used as collateral at scale. Corda will integrate with leading curators and lending protocols to support borrowing and the development of leverage positions previously impossible for traditional instruments.

Initial demand already shows strong momentum—Corda protocol has received over 30,000 pre-registrations to date, indicating market enthusiasm for new access to institutional-quality yields within blockchain.

Solana DeFi vs Ethereum: Growth Dynamics and Divergent Strategies

To understand the significance of R3’s choice of Solana, it’s important to look at the broader DeFi landscape. Ethereum remains dominant in total value locked (TVL), reflecting deep liquidity, a large developer ecosystem, and mature institutional adoption. However, Solana has emerged as one of the fastest-growing DeFi platforms.

Recent data shows Solana’s DeFi ecosystem holds over $9 billion in TVL, making it one of the top networks outside Ethereum and Layer 2 solutions, sometimes matching or rivaling the combined DeFi activity of major Ethereum Layer 2s. Solana’s advantages include high throughput, extremely low transaction costs, and rapidly growing user engagement.

Solana’s model has driven significantly higher onchain transaction volume and active wallet counts, especially for trading and high-frequency applications, although Ethereum still maintains overall TVL dominance and the largest share of traditional institutional assets. Nonetheless, trends indicate Solana is increasingly attracting institutional investors seeking more cost-efficient alternatives and higher responsiveness for high-speed trading needs.

From Pure Speculation to Structured Capital Formation

Since the strategic partnership announcement with the Solana Foundation in May 2025, R3 has spent the past eight to nine months focusing almost entirely on one fundamental question: how to tokenize the next trillion-dollar assets and bring them onto blockchain in a truly functional way for investors?

McDonald notes a significant shift in focus within the Solana ecosystem toward capital formation and structured capital allocation, rather than pure speculation. This reflects a maturing market where onchain investors are not only chasing high returns but also stability and diversification.

With R3’s experience managing over $10 billion in assets via their Corda platform, working with leading institutions including HSBC, Bank of America, Bank of Italy, the Monetary Authority of Singapore, Swiss National Bank, Euroclear, SDX, and SBI, the company understands deeply what traditional financial institutions need to commit to this digital transformation.

Efforts to increase liquidity for tokenized real-world assets will also require a broader flow of risk capital directly onchain. McDonald noted that while large native DeFi players exist today, participation still lacks sufficient balance sheet diversity. “We need more balance sheet diversity willing to allocate capital,” he said, adding that more flexible redemption mechanisms will provide real options for investors.

Closing the Gap Between Wall Street and Onchain

The ultimate goal of R3’s strategy is to close the widening gap between DeFi investors’ demand for stable yields and the supply of high-quality institutional assets available in traditional markets. Although hundreds of billions of dollars of real-world assets are now represented onchain, most institutional-class yields—especially instruments like semi-annual dividend stocks with attractive payment structures—still force capital offchain.

“Our goal is to close that gap,” McDonald said. “To bring Wall Street-quality assets into onchain in a way that finally makes sense for DeFi, and to bring offchain capital into the onchain markets at scale.”

This transformation is not just about blockchain technology or investor intelligence but about creating an ecosystem where traditional capital markets and native DeFi can operate synergistically, delivering greater efficiency, transparency, and access for all participants—from retail investors to global institutions.