Source: Goldman Sachs and Spanish banking group Banco Santander leave R3 blockchain consortium amid structural changes to deal
Pete Rizzo / CoinDesk : Tweets: @tuurdemeester Tweets: Tuur Demeester / @tuurdemeester : “though it is known R3 is now soliciting as much as $150m in funding from its members” http://www.coindesk.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
Goldman Sachs and Banco Santander were among the nine banks that joined R3 in September 2015 to build a shared framework for blockchain tech in markets. The exit lands just as R3 restructures its fundraising: the consortium has cut its target by $50M to $150M and revised terms so bank members take a 60% equity stake instead of the originally planned 90%.
The timing matters because both departing banks have been building parallel rails outside R3 — Santander is part of the Bank of America–led Ripple payments network formed weeks earlier, suggesting the exits are less a retreat from distributed ledgers than a shift toward direct vendor relationships.
First-order effects
- R3 loses two marquee founding members at the exact moment it is soliciting up to $150M from its own members, shrinking both the capital pool and the roster it can pitch to remaining banks.
- Remaining members inherit weaker terms than the original structure promised — 60% equity rather than 90% — reducing their upside for staying in.
Second-order effects
- Santander's move validates the direct-vendor route over consortium equity: its Ripple partnership gives it working payment rails without tying capital to R3's restructured round.
- Other member banks now face a fork — match the departed banks' vendor-first posture or double down on R3's cheaper, more member-friendly equity terms to keep the consortium alive.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, bank blockchain efforts migrate from collectively owned consortia toward per-bank deployments on vendor platforms like Ripple — a structure Santander itself confirmed when it launched cross-border blockchain payments in 2018.
- Consortium models survive only where they offer technology members cannot buy individually; R3's eventual $107M raise with outside investors like Intel signals the pivot from pure bank ownership to mixed funding.
The trend: Bank blockchain collaboration is shifting from jointly owned consortia toward individual banks contracting directly with ledger vendors, with R3's restructuring and member exits marking the turning point.