tl;dr
Franklin Templeton's OnChain U.S. Government Money Fund (FOBXX) is now available on Solana, a move that tokenizes the $594 million money market fund, allowing its shares to be issued as digital assets across various networks. Investors can access FOBXX through Franklin Templeton's Benji Investments ...
Franklin Templeton's OnChain U.S. Government Money Fund (FOBXX) is now available on Solana, a move that tokenizes the $594 million money market fund, allowing its shares to be issued as digital assets across various networks. Investors can access FOBXX through Franklin Templeton's Benji Investments mobile app, with each share closely resembling a yield-bearing stablecoin.
This expansion to Solana places FOBXX within the decentralized finance ecosystem, amidst competition from BlackRock's USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL). Solana's total value locked has grown to $9 billion, positioning it as the second most valuable DeFi ecosystem behind Ethereum.
Tokenization is seen as the "next evolution of markets," with projections indicating potential growth to $30 trillion by 2034. BlackRock has expanded BUIDL's footprint to multiple blockchains, further emphasizing the trend towards tokenized markets.
Franklin Templeton’s expansion to Solana signifies continued efforts to corner an emerging sector of crypto-based products. It faces stiff competition from BlackRock and its USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund, aka BUIDL, launched on Ethereum last spring. Among $3.6 billion in tokenized treasury products, BUIDL’s market cap has swelled to $637 million, muscling past BENJI’s total value last April, according to rwa.xyz data.
Encompassing real-world assets like bonds, real estate, and gold, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink once dubbed tokenization the “next evolution of markets,” enabling near-instantaneous settlement and reduced fees. While tokenized markets are still in their infancy, British bank Standard Chartered projected last month the tokenization sector could grow to as much as $30 trillion by 2034.
In November, BlackRock expanded BUIDL’s footprint to five new blockchains, issuing shares on Aptos, Avalanche, and the Ethereum scaling networks Arbitrum, Optimism, and Polygon. First available on Ethereum sidechain network Polygon and the layer-1 network Stellar, BENJI expanded to Ethereum last year, as well as Aptos, Avalanche, Arbitrum, and the Coinbase-launched Ethereum scaling network Base.