In September 2016 Ripple and R3 entered into an agreement whereby R3 would promote Ripple to its consortium of banks. Compensation came in the form of an option that gave R3 the right to buy 5 billion XRPs at $0.0085 until September 2019. In June 2017, Ripple informed R3 it was terminating the agreement, allegedly on the basis that R3 had not upheld its side of the bargain. In September 2017, R3 sued Ripple to get the options contract re-instated, when the value of the option would have been about $1 billion. According to legal papers filed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in its lawsuit against Ripple, a confidential settlement was reached in September 2018 that granted Ripple an option to buy 1.04 billion XRP that it exercised in September 2019. Assuming that the excercise price remained at $0.0085, that would have been worth between $240 and $480 million.
R3 has laid off a fifth of its employees as part of cost-cutting drive, blaming tough economic conditions that it says have led the company to shift its focus and business model. According to Bloomberg, the company had laid off just over a fifth of its headcount, affecting the company's operations globally and across different functions. R3 is based in New York but operates an office in the U.K. While enterprise blockchain technology has gained traction over the years, it remains a slow-moving industry where projects take years. However, these projects have moved slowly while others have been abandoned, leading to lost revenue for R3. https://r3.com/blog/r3s-commitment-to-shaping-the-future-of-finance-and-resilience-in-navigating-economic-realities/
R3 has rolled out a public beta of its Corda distributed ledger technology (DLT) platform that is capable of interoperating with other blockchain networks. Also, in partnership with Adhara, R3 has launched a Hyperledger Foundation Lab - Harmonia - to speed the development of interoperability protocols for regulated financial institutions, and achieve true atomic settlement across blockchain networks.
Dubai-based fintech company Wethaq has entered into a strategic partnership with enterprise software firm R3, in order to create a platform for issuing and trading sukuk securities based on R3's Corda offering.
Unchain provided KLM Royal Dutch Airlines with a strategic finance application based on blockchain technology developed by major global enterprise software firm R3. The solution intends to simplify KLM's accounting process and settlements by implementing R3's Corda.
The ASEAN Financial Innovation Network (AFIN), a not-for-profit entity jointly formed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), the International Finance Corporation (IFC), and the ASEAN Bankers Association, has partnered with R3 to enable banks and FinTechs to build and test central bank digital currency (CBDC) applications. R3 Sandbox for Digital Currencies is underpinned by Corda, and provides an environment for central banks, commercial banks, exchanges, payment providers, FinTechs and more to collaborate and evaluate CBDC use cases, as well as to learn, transact, and test roll-out strategies. https://www.r3.com/digital-currency-sandbox/
Built on R3's Corda platform, FundAdminChain aims to bring the distributors, transfer agents, custodians and other intermediaries involved in the buying and selling of units in a fund onto a distributed ledger. The blockchain is targeting transfer agencies and messaging, to begin with, and then aims to build out into asset services. https://www.coindesk.com/ex-r3-execs-new-mission-run-100-trillion-fund-trade-on-private-blockchains.
R3 published a short primer on how Regulated Liability Network (RLN) tokens would work within the structure of the R3 digital currency sandbox. It first describes the proposed technical architecture of the RLN along with where it sits within the existing sandbox. It then look into the specifics of how issuance and payment operations would work were RLN tokens to be issued in a Corda environment.
Blockchain consortium R3's trade finance platform Marco Polo has completed its first real transactions. Marco Polo, which is built on R3 enterprise blockchain platform Corda, successfully facilitated a trade between Germany and China, involving two German firms.
Marco Polo, the trade finance blockchain network launched in 2017 by R3 and TradeIX, is moving slowly but surely toward production. The latest milestone in the 22-bank blockchain consortium's methodical piloting process allows a third party to a trade (in this case a logistics provider) to trigger a payment to a supplier in real-time at the moment the goods are on their way to their destination.
Bank of America has joined Marco Polo, a consortium working to bring efficiencies to international trade using blockchain technology. Founded by R3 and TradeIX, Marco Polo is built on R3's Corda blockchain platform. "
Currently in Public Preview, R3 Sandbox for Digital Currencies is a learning and development platform for CBDC experimentation used by global financial institutions and regulatory bodies."
Built on R3's open-source blockchain platform Corda, Marco Polo has hosted the largest global trade finance trial that involved over 70 organizations from 25 countries including financial giants like Japanese SBI Holdings,
CULedger, a blockchain consortium and credit union service organization, has chosen enterprise software firm R3's Corda blockchain to underpin its forthcoming cross-border payments product.
A paper from R3 proposes a new securities settlement model that offers the ability to settle both gross and netted trades instantly using central bank digital currency (CBDC) and digital assets on a blockchain infrastructure. Existing delivery versus payment models exist on a continuum from intraday gross settlement-which minimizes settlement risk while requiring a great deal of liquidity-to delayed batch settlement-which offers netting efficiencies but delays final settlement. Market participants acknowledge the benefits of real time gross settlement but continue to rely on the operational and liquidity advantages of delayed batch settlement. The R3 model purports to be a "best of both worlds" model.
Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), enterprise blockchain firm R3 and other participants have completed a blockchain trial that they say resulted in faster property transactions.
Insurtech start-up B3i has launched its first product on R3's Corda platform, v1.0 of its Property Catastrophe Excess of Loss Reinsurance product. The new Cat XoL product will allowing insurers, brokers and reinsurers to "interact, negotiate and place risk more securely and efficiently."
ISDA, Clifford Chance, R3 and the Singapore Academy of Law have published a new whitepaper that provides analysis on the legal issues relating to the use of smart derivatives contracts on distributed ledger technology (DLT).