Franklin Templeton launches tokenized money fund on Base

Franklin Templeton is launching its tokenized money fund on Base, Coinbase’s layer-2 network, the asset manager said on Oct. 31.

The Franklin OnChain US Government Money Fund (FOBXX) is the first tokenized fund to launch on Base, Franklin Templeton said in a post on the X platform.

Created in 2021, FOBXX has previously launched on blockchain networks including Stellar, Polygon, and Arbitrum.

RWA value by segment. Source: RWA.xyz

Franklin Templeton is unique among tokenized fund managers in outsourcing a meaningful portion of reporting requirements — such as share ownership records typically handled by an off-chain transfer agent — to blockchain networks’ public ledgers.

“We are currently the only product with the ability to use public distributed ledger technologies for official transaction record-keeping,” Roger Bayston, Franklin Templeton’s head of digital assets told Cointelegraph in July.

The launch of FOBXX on Base indicates United States regulators consider Base’s public ledger to be a legitimate instrument for financial recordkeeping.

Money funds generate low-risk yields for investors by holding highly liquid assets such as short-dated Treasury bills and commercial paper.

Franklin Templeton’s FOBXX currently has net assets of approximately $435 million and has been generating annualized returns of about 4.7% as of October 2024.

It is accessible through Franklin Templeton’s Benji Investments platform.

The Base launch marks Franklin Templeton’s latest effort to enhance the accessibility of its tokenized real-world assets (RWAs).

Since its 2023 launch, Base has emerged as Ethereum’s second most popular layer-2 scaling solution, with a total value locked (TVL) of approximately $8 billion, according to L2Beat.

Arbitrum leads with upwards of $13 billion in TVL, the data shows.

Tokenized RWAs — from money funds to artworks — represent a $30-trillion market opportunity globally, Colin Butler, Polygon’s global head of institutional capital, told Cointelegraph in August.

Demand is surging for products that tokenize T-bills and other highly liquid yield-bearing assets.

FOBXX’s top rival is BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL), with assets under management (AUM) of approximately $530 million, according to data from RWA.xyz.

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