A number of large banks and other traditional financial (TradFi) institutions are set to use the Solana blockchain for their tokenization efforts.

R3, a U.K. developer of blockchain technology for financial institutions, is teaming up with the Solana Foundation to bring the former’s clients and their tokenized real-world assets to Solana.

Through its blockchain platform, Corda, R3 holds over $10 billion in assets and counts the likes of HSBC, Bank of America, Bank of Italy and the Monetary Authority of Singapore among its participants.

Tokenization, the term for minting real-world assets such as stocks and bonds as digital tokens that can be traded on decentralized networks, is one of the principal use cases of blockchain technology attracting the attention and investment of the TradFi world.

A recent report by Boston Consulting Group and crypto payments company Ripple said the tokenization market could reach $18.9 trillion by 2033.

R3’s aim is to supercharge the scale and liquidity of the tokenized asset ecosystem by making the assets available on a public blockchain like Solana.

The total value of assets held on Solana may be dwarfed by Ethereum, but it processes more transactions and has more active addresses.

«As the world’s most used public blockchain, Solana … [is] the ideal foundation for the next generation of regulated digital finance,» R3 said in an announcement on Thursday.

The Solana wallet address credited with making Justin Sun the top holder of the TRUMP memecoin for a private dinner and VIP reception with U.S. President Donald Trump later Thursday probably belongs to Sun-linked crypto exchange HTX.

Several blockchain explorers, including Arkham Intelligence and SolanaFM, tag the wallet as belonging to the cryptocurrency exchange, which acknowledged Sun as its leader in a 2023 blog post.

That address now holds about $23.3 million worth of TRUMP tokens, according to on-chain data and appears at the top of the event’s leaderboard, which is posted on a website publicized by Trump on his X account. The wallet is tagged “Sun.”

Sun, the founder of the Tron blockchain, said on social media that he was the top TRUMP holder in the sweepstake. The sweepstake rewards large TRUMP token holders with access to an event hosted at a Trump-owned golf club near Washington, D.C.

HTX, formerly known as Huobi, was acquired by About Capital, a Hong Kong investment firm, in October 2022. Sun denied that he was involved in the acquisition in an interview with CoinDesk TV at the time. He did, however, join the exchange as a member of its global advisory board. Huobi later identified Sun as its leader in the blog post.

In 2023, the platform rebranded to HTX, a nod to Huobi, Tron and «exchange.» At the time, the exchange pointed to a “commitment being all in TRON.”

Sun’s connection to the Trump-linked ecosystem also involves a $75 million investment in World Liberty Financial tokens, a decentralized finance initiative backed by the president’s family.

The Chinese-born crypto billionaire was sued by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) under the Biden administration. The regulator alleged he had been “manipulating the market” for tokens tied to his ventures and paid celebrities “to tout” these tokens.

That suit has been put on hold under the Trump administration’s SEC leadership as the parties looked to find a “potential resolution.” Under the current administration, the regulator has dismissed several lawsuits and investigations against crypto firms, including Coinbase, Kraken and Uniswap.

Donald Trump’s memecoin was launched just days before his inauguration earlier this year. It was met with criticism from the crypto industry and among lawmakers, over the timing of the launch and its allocation to Trump-affiliated insiders.

TRUMP is at the time of writing trading at $14.64, up 11% in the last 24 hours.

Kraken plans to list tokenized shares of Nvidia, Apple, Tesla and over 50 other U.S. stocks and exchange-traded funds (ETFs), the Wall Street Journal reported.

The tokens, deployed on Solana SOL, will be known under the name “xStocks” and will be available to trade 24/7 for investors all across the world. Some of the ETFs that will be available to trade include the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY), which tracks the S&P 500 index, and the SPDR Gold Shares (GLD).

The stocks will be represented by real shares held by Backed Finance and can be redeemed 1:1 for their cash value.

Kraken had announced the initial rollout of over 11,000 U.S.-listed stocks and ETFs in April, starting with 10 U.S. states and offered through Kraken Securities.

This latest announcement expands Kraken’s offering to include tokenized versions of over 50 stocks and ETFs to customers outside of the U.S., starting with Europe, Latin America, Africa and Asia.

The move puts Kraken in direct competition to platforms like Robinhood (HOOD) and makes it the first exchange to successfully offer tokenized shares of major U.S. stocks. Binance attempted to launch tokenized U.S. stocks in 2021 but canceled their plans eventually due to regulatory uncertainty.

A Kraken spokesperson told the Wall Street Journal that the exchange is “actively working with various regulators” to ensure that xStocks can be offered legally in each jurisdiction as regulation varies.

Tokenization, which turns real-world assets into blockchain tokens, has become the latest buzz word in crypto with more and more companies starting to enter the space. Some, including Ondo Finance, BlackRock and Franklin Templeton, have long been pioneers in the area, pushing their overall tokenization market to a $65 billion market cap as of May.