We sat down with Richard Brown, CEO of R3, to discuss the firm’s shift toward public blockchains. R3 built Corda, the dominant private permissioned blockchain, which supports tens of billions of dollars in assets across production networks. Banks, exchanges, and market infrastructure providers run on those networks today. Now R3 wants those institutions to reach open networks directly. Brown explained the strategy, the choice of Solana, and the product that will carry it, Corda protocol.
Exclusive ⚡️ R3 spent a decade building with the world’s largest financial institutions. Now that infrastructure connects to Solana. In our latest interview, CEO Richard Brown said R3 is preparing to launch Corda Protocol on Solana, beginning with a yield vault alongside an unnamed top-tier bank. @inside_r3 is targeting a full launch ahead of Solana Breakpoint this November, with instant liquidity planned as part of the rollout. Corda networks can now connect to Solana mainnet in production, allowing institutions to use Solana to notarize private transactions and bridge tokenized assets to onchain investors. Full interview with Richard Brown, CEO of R3:
— Generation Infinity (@Genfinity) October 7, 2026
From Private Networks to Public Rails
R3 started in 2014 and 2015 with a simple question. Could it help banks understand what blockchain meant for them? Banks could not touch permissionless networks back then. Brown joked that saying “Bitcoin” in a bank meeting room made people’s faces go white. As a result, R3 built private permissioned networks instead. Brown led that effort as CTO and built Corda, now in version four. Those networks process millions of transactions each month.
However, the private networks stayed isolated from each other. Brown ran a strategy review a year or two ago and tested the original assumptions. Regulation had shifted, and the technology had matured. Audits became routine, and mainstream fund managers began issuing tokenized products onchain. Consequently, Brown concluded that no reason remained to keep private and public networks apart.
That left R3 with a choice. It could let the convergence of traditional finance and DeFi happen to it, or it could lead. R3 chose to lead. Brown noted that his own 2013 and 2014 blog posts already speculated about tokens representing real-world ownership. Projects like colored coins explored similar ideas back then. In contrast, the market now delivers yielding stablecoins and tokens that confer real legal rights to offchain assets.
Why R3 Chose Solana
Brown admitted he did not expect Solana to win the evaluation. He assumed R3 would build on the EVM, since no one gets fired for building on the Solidity stack. However, R3 needed two things. First, existing Corda networks must connect directly to a permissionless layer-1 for consensus. Second, R3 wants to build RWA yield vaults onchain, which demands a fast and reliable layer-1. A layer-2 sitting on a layer-1 would make the architecture, in Brown’s words, rickety.
Performance then narrowed the field. Brown explained that Ethereum runs single-threaded because nobody knows which parts of the ledger a transaction touches until it runs. Solana works differently. Developers declare upfront which accounts a transaction reads or writes. Validators can therefore process thousands of non-conflicting transactions at once. Brown credited Solana’s engineers for this design and said the team undersells it technically.
Security also mattered. On Solana, the platform includes two audited token standards, the standard and the extended one. Everyone uses the same implementation. On the EVM, by contrast, each new token contract needs its own audit. Brown also pointed to shared commercial thinking with the Solana Foundation and Solana Labs. Both groups want a single shared and scalable layer-1. After attending Accelerate in New York in May, he felt certain about the decision. He has never regretted it.
Follow the Money to Onchain Allocators
Brown drew a lesson from R3’s older networks. Some of them failed to grow because they served the same investors with the same pool of capital. Those networks added cost without expanding demand. Therefore, R3 now follows the money. Brown calls the target group allocators, meaning individuals, whales, institutions, and stablecoin treasuries.
A large pool of capital now sits onchain and wants to stay there. These holders want exposure beyond crypto-native yield, such as private credit. Selling tokens and moving into the traditional system makes little sense to them. Brown argues the supply should come to the money. R3’s job is to tokenize assets and package them in a form allocators actually want.
Downstream markets then follow naturally. An owner of an onchain asset may stay bullish yet need short-term cash. That owner needs collateralized borrowing, which traditional finance calls repo and DeFi calls a lending protocol. Brown expects that financial market structure to grow around whatever sits at the top, where buyers and sellers meet. Notably, he sees activity shifting from traditional finance to DeFi as onchain allocators grow in value and volume.
Why Tokenizing an Asset Is Not Enough
Brown said at Solana Breakpoint that tokenizing an asset does not mean anyone wants it. He sees the evidence on block explorers. Many tokenized funds show only three to seven holders, with a few whales and no long tail. The reason is a mismatch between product and buyer.
Onchain holders already have choices. They can stake SOL for several percent yield, so the bar for yield sits higher than offchain. They also expect to enter and exit instantly. A three-month redemption window does not work for them. In addition, they want to start with small positions and scale up as confidence grows.
Compatibility with DeFi adds another hurdle. A token that only approved holders can redeem makes poor collateral. A lender who liquidates a defaulted position may not be able to redeem it. Brown said the lending market structure needs upgrades so such collateral can be liquidated. Meanwhile, the democratization promise still holds. Someone can spend $10 today and get exposure to a private credit fund, which once required a $100,000 check.
How Corda Protocol Yield Vaults Work
Brown described the yield vault as a mutual fund rebuilt with different economics. A smart contract owns assets, in this case tokens representing real-world assets. It then issues a vault token against them. Holders own a proportional claim on whatever sits in the box. A curator manages the vault, much like a portfolio manager in traditional finance.
R3 is building this as a marketplace, and Brown flagged the choice problem. Search for a USB-C cable on Amazon and a million options appear. Most people click Amazon Basics because it minimizes regret. R3 faces the same question. Twenty private credit funds from fifteen curators would overwhelm users. Brown wants an easy mode and a hard mode, with a default that people probably will not regret.
At interview time, R3 targeted the first half of 2026 for launch. Brown expected one or two vaults at the start, which users reach through the Corda protocol app. A pre-deposit vault opens roughly 45 days earlier so users can queue funds. Users deposit stablecoins and receive a vault token tracking the underlying portfolio. Primary subscription and redemption require KYC, since the underlying funds must know their customer. R3 is working to make secondary trading permissionless, though that may not arrive on day one.
An Option for Existing Corda Networks
Brown also explained what the move means for existing Corda customers. Corda 4.14 ships in the first quarter of 2026. Upgrading lets a private network use Solana for consensus instead of running its own notaries. The network stays private. Solana simply processes and confirms its transactions.
R3 will then show customers the onchain demand its vaults reveal. If demand exists for a certain type of government bond, a customer can auto-tokenize assets and bridge them straight into a yield vault. Brown stressed that nobody has to do this. He called the upgrade a free option, not an obligation. R3 continues to support the Corda blockchain, and different tools serve different jobs.
One Source of Truth for Capital Markets
Brown closed with the vision he cares about most. Fragmentation has plagued IT systems since his early days at IBM, where his first product helped two systems in one company share data. Private networks tackled the same problem between firms. Everyone still kept their own copy, and copies fell out of sync.
On a single shared layer-1, the picture changes. Brown described searching USDC on Solscan. The explorer shows the full supply issued, which is the issuer’s view. A click on the holders tab opens a wallet, and that wallet reveals every other token it holds. The issuer view and the holder view sit in one place. Brown wants primary issuance, trading, lending, and everything downstream to share one source of truth.
He also flagged the trade-off. Concentrating everything in one network concentrates risk, and he does not want to sound utopian. For people outside crypto, he suspects most will reach this system through familiar apps from banks or Coinbase. In that case, how people consume the product differs from where it runs. Consequently, Brown wants R3 to work at the layer of the stack that captures fair compensation for the value it adds.
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