Ownera, R3 Partner for Security Token Interoperability – Ledger Insights

Today, Ownera and enterprise blockchain firm R3 announced a collaboration around Ownera’s FinP2P platform that supports trading of digital securities or assets from any public or private blockchain or centralized ledger. The news follows Ownera’s recent funding which included backing from JP Morgan.

Numerous platforms are emerging to support the issuance of security tokens or digital assets. From an investor’s point of view, this could potentially involve the need to integrate with many blockchains and platforms for settlement and custody. FinP2P offers an order routing solution, meaning an investor simply connects to the FinP2P API to trade any digital asset across multiple platforms.

In addition, Ownera offers a unified digital wallet solution for institutional use. We believe this aspect is optional.

R3 was involved in the early trials of the FinP2P platform together with DTCC, ING and others. Today it was confirmed that organizations using R3 Corda will be able to manage Corda-based tokens alongside tokens from other DLT networks. Ownera used the term “inter-negotiable” instead of interoperability.

“We believe users should have the freedom to connect and interact with each other across multiple networks and markets,” said Todd McDonald, co-founder of R3. “We are excited to see the interoperability work emerging across the wider R3 ecosystem, such as the orchestration and ‘inter-tradability’ of digital assets across Corda and other ledgers offered via Owner’s FinP2P.

The R3 Ownera relationship

For FinP2P to work, those who wish to offer assets or services to the FinP2P network will host a FinP2P network node (which is not a blockchain node). Therefore, ideally for Ownera, many Corda-based offerings might add a FinP2P node to enable their solution to access all the investors connected via FinP2P.

Our guess was that the collaboration was a marketing relationship between R3 and Ownera. However, Ownera refused to reveal the nature of the commercial arrangement, but said it was much more than marketing. Owner’s Anthony Woolley mentioned that the Corda FinP2P adapter was not trivial to develop. “It was important that our engineering team worked closely with the team at R3 to ensure this was done in a completely cryptographically secure and robust way that R3 would be happy to certify,” Woolley said.

Via email, Woolley elaborated on the wallet, saying it offers the following tools:

• The ability to hold assets tokenized on Corda alongside assets tokenized on other blockchains, e.g. in the same wallet, contains assets that can be on Corda, Stella, Ethereum, Quorum, Tezos, etc.
• The ability to pay for an asset tokenized on Corda with digital cash or securities held on another ledger. The FinP2P network orchestrates between the securities and the payment part of a transaction in real time, so for example you can buy a security on Corda and pay for it with USDC
• The ability to secure your wallet holdings, including those on Corda, with the digital escrow technology of your choice, such as securing your wallet with Fireblocks or other leading digital escrow solutions
• The ability to pledge securities tokenized on Corda for lending or borrowing against digital securities and cash held on other ledgers.

R3 previously had a somewhat lucrative marketing relationship with Ripple, giving R3 options over five billion XRP tokens. Ripple and R3 had a disagreement, resulting in litigation that was eventually settled out of court, with R3 being entitled to just over a billion XRP. Depending on when R3 sold the tokens, it was worth between $240 million and $470 million.

If the Ownera-R3 collaboration is a marketing deal, hopefully for both parties, this relationship will be equally lucrative.

Update: Feedback from Ownera was added to the article