R3 Hires for Launch of New DLT Platform
Posted by Colin Lambert. Last updated: January 25, 2024
Distributed ledger technology (DLT) enterprise and services firm R3 has launched R3 Digital Markets, a suite of end-to-end solutions for the digital asset world, and hired Kate Karimson as chief commercial officer to lead the roll-out.
R3 says the new product suite will helps firms to adopt and drive value from digital assets and digital currencies, whilst helping them prepare for the future of regulated markets, and supports the process from initial exploration to full scale production. It is powered by Corda, R3’s tokenisation platform that is widely deployed around the digital assets industry.
R3 Digital Markets has four main components – R3 Digital Currency, which offers management of the full lifecycle of digital currencies, including CBDCs and tokenised deposits, facilitating interaction across networks and core banking systems for 24/7 settlement; R3 Digital Assets, which enables full lifecycle management tokenisation solutions and digital asset exchanges to be built for the issuance, listing, trading, management and custody of existing and new assets, according to the business need.
The two other components are R3 Digital Connect, which enables the seamless integration of classic existing systems and all DLT networks, facilitating interoperability and integration in financial markets; and R3 Digital Lab, something the firm says is a cloud-based collaborative lab equipped to handle custom use cases in the path to production, providing support and education to help businesses launch DLT projects without the need for a complex infrastructure.
“R3 is laser-focused on progressing capital markets infrastructure,” says David Rutter, R3 CEO and founder. “We’re designing long-term solutions for a seamlessly connected financial world. Corda built the foundation for this, as the only production-ready enterprise DLT solution built for regulated markets. With the launch of R3 Digital Markets, we’re further progressing Corda’s mission to unlock the true potential of digital currencies and digital assets, bringing unparalleled value to economies as they digitise.”
Karimson joins R3 from LedgerEdge, a firm co-founded by Rutter and where she worked for just over one year, having joined from CME Group where she was product head for the fixed income OTC platform BrokerTec. Karimson moved to CME Group as part of its acquisition of Icap, where she worked for four years in the BrokerTec business. “R3 has been at the forefront of digitising and shaping financial markets for almost a decade,” she says. “Building DLT products and solutions is a complex challenge, and R3 Digital Markets is all about bringing together the experience of R3 and the foundations of Corda to modernise infrastructures and lay the groundwork for regulated networks that are not built in silos.
“R3 Digital Markets builds on the success of Corda by further removing barriers to entry for firms looking to build innovative DLT solutions, so they can prepare for the future of digital finance,” she adds.