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Japanese financial giant SBI Holdings continues to steer the country's conservative capital market toward public blockchains. The conglomerate has announced a strategic partnership with the Solana Foundation, under which SBI R3 Japan will shift its focus and be renamed SBI Solana Global.
The project is being developed jointly with Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group (SMFG). The new alliance will focus on the tokenization of real-world assets (RWAs), ranging from the issuance of stablecoins, including the yen-backed JPYSC stablecoin, to the digitization of corporate bonds, commercial paper, and real estate.
The infrastructure will also be designed for cross-border transfers and micropayments between autonomous AI agents. The main goal is to give local Japanese financial products direct access to global capital.
The restructuring of SBI R3 Japan marks an important precedent for traditional finance. The entity was originally created around Corda, a private enterprise blockchain. Its transition to Solana indicates that Japan's largest banks are officially shifting their priorities, with closed interbank databases giving way to public Layer 1 infrastructure because of its high throughput, low fees, and extensive developer base.
At the same time, SBI continues to follow a multichain approach. The conglomerate is not abandoning its existing partnerships. Core B2B transfers and traditional payment gateways, for example, will continue to be supported by its long-standing partner Ripple. However, to build a flexible and dynamic digital securities market, SBI required a more advanced smart contract environment, which Solana provides.
Why Solana?
The choice of technological infrastructure is supported by strict market pragmatism. According to current data from rwa.xyz, Solana is now the leading alternative Layer 1 network in the RWA sector:
- The network ranks third globally, with $3.3 billion in tokenized assets and 697 active projects. By comparison, Avalanche holds $2.1 billion, while Ripple's XRP Ledger accounts for $322.9 million.
- The presence of almost 700 active contracts gives SBI access to an established investor ecosystem, removing the need to build liquidity from scratch.
With this in context, SBI Solana Global will begin scaling the platform in Japan before expanding its infrastructure to major financial centers across Asia, with the aim of becoming the region's leading regulated Web3 hub.
Dan Burgin
U.Today Editorial Team
