🔥 Richard Brown (CEO of R3 Labs) on Why Solana is the Future of Institutional Blockchain & Real-World Assets | Breakpoint Abu Dhabi 2025

Live from Solana's Breakpoint conference in Abu Dhabi (December 2025), Richard Brown — CEO of R3 Labs and former CTO — joins us for an in-depth conversation on bridging traditional finance with DeFi.

Richard shares his journey from discovering Bitcoin in 2011 to building enterprise blockchain solutions, and why R3 is now all-in on Solana.

Key highlights:

- How Bitcoin’s permissionless value transfer changed everything for him

- The story behind Corda: R3’s private blockchain powering billions in assets

- Why Solana was the “overwhelmingly obvious” choice for R3’s public chain integration

- The massive pivot: From optimizing TradFi → bringing institutional capital and RWAs into DeFi

- Exclusive reveal: Corda Protocol — a new on-chain RWA marketplace launching early 2026 on Solana

- Partnerships with Kamino, yield vaults, tokenizers, and curators to deliver composable, high-quality real-world yield

- Why Solana’s token extensions are a “secret superpower” for institutional adoption

- Thoughts on clear thinking, writing, and using AI effectively

Richard makes the case that the next trillion dollars of assets will be issued on-chain — and explains why Solana is uniquely positioned to host the unified internet capital markets of the future.

Timestamps:

00:00 - Intro at Breakpoint Abu Dhabi

00:20 - Richard’s background & Bitcoin origin story

03:35 - The magic of public-key cryptography

06:15 - Writing as thinking + AI advice

07:25 - From enterprise blockchain to Solana

09:40 - TradFi → DeFi: The pivotal shift

12:50 - Connecting private networks to Solana

15:40 - Exclusive: Corda Protocol RWA marketplace announcement

19:30 - Token extensions & Solana’s technical advantages

24:20 - Validators, MEV, and institutional requirements

Follow Richard on X: @gendal

R3 Labs: https://r3.com

Corda Protocol updates: https://corda.xyz

#Solana #Breakpoint2025 #RWA #DeFi #TradFi #Blockchain #AbuDhabi #RealWorldAssets #InstitutionalCrypto #Crypto

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