Industry collaboration is as important as innovation
The enterprise blockchain industry was never intended to be dominated by a small number of market players. Permissioned and permissionless protocols can and should work together.
Delivering an open, trusted, and enduring digital economy
Interoperability across public and private chains requires an open dialogue and a transparent view of progress. At R3, we’re actively engaging with our customers, industry collaboratives, and partners across the private and public sector to unlock the broadest possible reach.
Projects using industry standards
Projects on different protocols can move the industry forward by leveraging common industry standards to enable smart contract powered applications that connect and move value across ecosystems freely and safely.
Sum is greater than the whole of its parts
By working together and tapping into diverse market and technological expertise, we draw closer to empowering market participants to control their assets across different networks securely, seamlessly, and in a streamlined way.
Next generation of Corda
The next generation of Corda will be the industry’s biggest driver of true interoperability to date. It enables composability across Corda-based apps, asset bridging, and soon trusted bridges to other enterprise protocols.
Approaches to Interoperability
There are two primary industry approaches to interoperability—asset bridging and atomic swaps. The model R3 is starting with is cross-chain atomic swaps for regulated markets.
Atomic swaps
In an atomic swap, two digital assets can be exchanged simultaneously on separate networks and ledgers. The assets never leave their respective networks and the swap is ‘atomic’ or instant. Both one-way transactions either successfully settle or fail.
Asset bridging
This enables assets to move from one ledger or network to another. When an asset is ‘bridged’, it must be securely immobilized on the source network in lockstep with its re-appearance on the new, destination network. For example, an Ethereum precious metal token can move onto a Corda-based network as a token and into a regulated lifecycle workflow. Or a CBDC issued on a Corda network can be ‘wrapped’ and minted onto a Quorum network for payment.
Real world example: Project Jura powered by Corda
We built out the basic workflow for atomic swaps when we participated in Project Jura alongside the BIS and the central banks of France and Switzerland. The project enabled a central bank-issued digital Euro to be paid and settled from one bank to another within a French regulatory network while, simultaneously, a digital Swiss franc was paid and settled in the opposite direction on the Swiss regulatory network.
Institutions backing the future
The legacy characteristics of “spunta”—slow, inefficient processes hampered by a lack of transparency and consensus—made interbank reconciliation an ideal candidate for streamlining and automation through the Corda-powered solution.
Silvia Attanasio – Head of Innovation, The Italian Banking Association
Having helped lead the build out and deployment of transformative global financial markets DLT networks, HQLAX recognizes the importance of those networks being able to communicate with each other. We have been working closely with R3, Adhara, and Fnality to forge a path towards seamless cross-chain interoperability. We built HQLAX on Corda from the outset – and the new version of the platform will enable us to further future-proof our offering and provide the flexibility our customers need.
Guido Stroemer – CEO, HQLAX
Building for the future is best done together and requires cross-industry collaboration to enable the interoperability that will drive widespread adoption of DLT as a transformational technology. The Hyperledger community is at the forefront of technical innovation in blockchain interoperability. We are excited R3 and Adhara have contributed Harmonia to Hyperledger Labs as we truly believe in working openly and cooperatively to build the critical common software core for next generation deployments.
Daniela Barbosa – Executive Director of Hyperledger Foundation
Adhara’s intraday liquidity and payments solutions are built on the belief that the new wholesale digital ecosystem will comprise a set of complementary connected business platforms operating on different technologies. Following our role in last year’s cross-chain repo swap pilot across Corda and Enterprise Ethereum alongside Fnality and HQLAx, we believe the Harmonia Lab is a natural step forward. It will provide an important building block to accelerate the industry’s development of wholesale interoperability protocols.
Julio Faura – CEO, Adhara
Fnality and its participants have been at the forefront of interoperability innovation, testing end-to-end DvP and PvP across Enterprise Ethereum and Corda platforms in partnership with Adhara. Interoperability and interface standards are fundamental to the future digital capital markets ecosystem, enabling each platform to focus on its strengths while interoperating seamlessly. This is a very important initiative to drive adoption of DLT across financial markets.
Rhomaios Ram – CEO, Fnality International
SDX, the world’s first fully regulated financial market infrastructure for digital assets, strongly advocates for interoperability within the enterprise DLT space. This capability is crucial in supporting our vision of providing institutional clients with innovative, trusted, and efficient FMI and services for digital assets. Since 2021, Corda has facilitated our end-to-end infrastructure for digital securities. We welcome the launch of the Hyperledger Lab, Harmonia, and the interoperability between Corda and Ethereum, as it will enable us to securely expand SDX’s reach to both other regulated networks and public blockchains: a key step in building the future of financial markets infrastructure.
David Newns – Head of SIX Digital Exchange
Connect with R3
Contact us to learn more about R3’s interoperability work and to participate in projects.
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