Franklin Templeton’s Tokenized Money Market Fund Expands to Arbitrum

In this instance, we are referring to the third platform where the fund’s stocks can be exchanged using blockchain technology. Earlier, the fund was tokenized on Stellar and the Ethereum network’s layer-2 solution, Polygon.

As a crypto investor, I’ve learned that the Stellar network serves as the official record of share ownership for the Franklin OnChain U.S Government Money Fund, according to a representative from Franklin Templeton. It’s also worth noting that this fund could potentially utilize the Polygon and Arbitrum networks for specific accounts, depending on eligibility. At the moment, access to Arbitrum is being offered primarily to institutional wallets.

The major investment firm on Wall Street announced that this expansion aims to facilitate the blending of decentralized finance with conventional banking systems, thereby allowing Franklin to tap into a fresh market segment for FOBXX.

“Roger Bayston, head of digital assets at Franklin Templeton, stated that integrating with the Arbitrum platform is a significant move in our path towards enhancing our asset management abilities using blockchain technology.”

As a researcher, I’d like to share an interesting fact about a fund I’ve been studying. This fund, introduced in 2021, marked a pioneering step by leveraging a public blockchain to manage transactions and ownership details. Currently, it holds a market capitalization of approximately $420 million, positioning it as the third-largest U.S. Treasury-linked on-chain product, based on data from rwa.xyz.

Following that move, various other companies have been actively venturing into the tokenization of real-world assets (RWAs) by transferring their funds onto blockchain networks. Notable among these are industry giants like BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, as well as crypto-focused startups such as Securitize and Ondo Finance. All have recently introduced tokenized investment funds.

BlackRock’s USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL), which operates on the primary Ethereum network, holds the largest market capitalization among similar funds. The management of BUIDL’s tokenized shares and the maintenance of official ownership records are handled by Securitize.