Reinsurance is one of the oldest corners of global finance. It traces back roughly 380 years to Lloyd’s Coffee House in London, where freight investors pooled capital to cover shipping losses. Today, reinsurers still perform that same function. They insure the insurers, absorbing risk from flood, earthquake, wind, marine, energy, and aviation coverage once primary insurers pass it along.
Dan Roberts, CEO and co-founder of OnRe, wants capital markets to access that risk directly. His company operates as a property reinsurer out of Bermuda, underwriting global catastrophe and specialty exposure. Roberts and his team tokenized that exposure into a product called ONyc, now live on Solana. Instead of buying stock in a public insurance company, investors get direct exposure to the reinsurance portfolio itself. OnRe has grown into the largest onchain manager of reinsurance capital globally. The ONyc token recently became the top real-world asset on Solana by DeFi active TVL, according to Solana’s own ecosystem research.
🌪️ The $800B reinsurance industry storms onto Solana.
— Generation Infinity (@Genfinity) October 1, 2026
OnRe manages $300M in tokenized reinsurance, spanning global property risk across flood, earthquake, wind, energy and aviation.
CEO Dan Roberts on bringing one of the world’s most important financial markets onchain: pic.twitter.com/hjlMPRusBu
Why Solana Won the Infrastructure Decision
Roberts said OnRe had previously built insurance infrastructure on Ethereum and other networks before consolidating into one product on Solana. Speed and transaction cost mattered, but the deciding factor was community. Solana’s ecosystem offered an engaged cohort of DeFi protocols willing to integrate ONyc, help set risk parameters, and co-market the product from day one.
That engagement also created a feedback loop Roberts called “elastic.” When OnRe launches a new structure, such as a junior or senior tranche of reinsurance risk, the market responds almost immediately. Strong demand validates the product quickly. Weak demand signals a needed adjustment just as fast. Roberts contrasted that with six years running a reinsurance business without this kind of real-time signal, where iteration happened far more slowly.
Tokenization Alone Isn’t the Point
Roberts drew a sharp line between tokenization and composability. A tokenized asset with no secondary use, he argued, carries limited value on its own. Composability is what turns a single reinsurance token into a full curve of risk-adjusted products: lending markets, senior and junior tranches, fixed-yield instruments, and leveraged positions, all priced in real time by market demand.
That structure lets OnRe serve a wide range of investors from one base asset. Someone seeking a steady return near the base rate can hold ONyc directly as a base asset. Someone wanting more yield can move into a junior tranche or add leverage. Someone wanting safety can move into a senior tranche or lend against their position. A traditional reinsurance fund, by comparison, often needs 12 months or longer to research, structure, and launch a single new product, by which point market conditions may have shifted. OnRe can adjust in close to real time instead.
From $30M to $300M in Under a Year
OnRe’s assets under management grew from roughly $30 million to $300 million over about eight months, according to Roberts. That scale reflects both inbound capital and diversification across reinsurance lines tied to quarterly renewal cycles in January, April, June, and July. The growth lines up with independent tracking from Solana’s ecosystem reporting, which recorded OnRe crossing $200 million in assets under management by mid-2026 before reaching a reported $300 million all-time high in September.
Liquidity has scaled alongside AUM. OnRe recently rolled out a request-for-quote system that aggregates primary liquidity so investors can transact directly instead of relying solely on secondary market makers. Roberts said that system pushed available liquidity from roughly $10 million to $45 million within a single week.
Transparency as a Market Expectation
Roberts pointed to transparency as a bar the onchain market sets without being asked. OnRe publishes a live dashboard alongside third-party attestations showing the loss levels at which different tranches would be affected. None of that reporting is legally required for a blockchain business, Roberts noted, but investors expect it anyway. That expectation is pushing standards higher across competing onchain RWA projects, covering everything from audits to credit assessment methodology.
Where Traditional Reinsurers Fit In
Asked whether legacy reinsurance firms will eventually build their own onchain platforms, Roberts predicted most will instead partner with crypto-native teams that already understand both the regulatory and technical sides of the business. He compared the shift to how institutions adopted private credit tokenization before reinsurance, driven by the same demand for real-time liquidity and transparency. Roberts said OnRe plans to keep expanding ONyc’s risk-adjusted return curve, with a stated goal of spanning roughly 6% to 45% depending on investor risk appetite, while continuing to prioritize liquidity and independent credit assessment across the asset class.
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