Chiara Bianchi
Franklin Templeton, a leading global asset manager, has expanded its OnChain U.S. Government Money Fund (FOBXX) to its fifth blockchain network, Aptos, through a collaboration with the project’s Foundation. This move allows institutional investors to access FOBXX through digital wallets on Franklin Templetonโs Benji Investments platform, utilizing the BENJI token. Investors can now hold their wallets on the blockchain network upon request, the company stated.
The aim of this partnership is to enhance the interoperability between real-world, treasury-backed assets and blockchain networks, especially those outside the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) environment.
Bashar Lazaar, Head of Grants and Ecosystem at Aptos Foundation, emphasized the importance of bridging traditional finance (TradFi) with decentralized finance (DeFi) as well as connecting EVM and non-EVM networks. โIntegrating Benji Investments with Aptos is a significant step forward, and weโre excited to have them join the Aptos ecosystem,โ he noted.
The FOBXX fund primarily invests in low-risk U.S. government securities, such as fixed, floating, and variable rate securities, along with repurchase agreements backed by U.S. government assets. Initially introduced on the Stellar blockchain, the fund has since expanded to other networks, including Polygon, Arbitrum, and Avalanche. The launch on Aptos has already attracted more than $20 million in subscriptions.
Roger Bayston, Franklin Templetonโs Head of Digital Assets, explained that the choice to expand to Aptos was driven by the networkโs ability to meet the platformโs stringent standards. He described the announcement as a key milestone in the firmโs continued efforts to enhance asset management through blockchain technology.
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Aptos is a relatively new Layer 1 blockchain that uses the Move programming language, originally developed at Meta by the team behind the Diem stablecoin project. Its goal is to provide a faster, more scalable alternative to existing blockchain networks. The blockchain has seen steady growth in user activity, with 7.5 million active addresses as of September, according to data from PRIME, compared to Ethereumโs 12.3 million.
Aptos Labs co-founder and CEO Mo Shaikh expressed pride in traditional financial institutions choosing to build on Aptos, helping bring the benefits of decentralization to their clients.
Growing demand for tokenized government securities
FOBXX made history in 2021 as the first U.S.-registered fund to use a public blockchain for transaction processing and share ownership recording. Since then, tokenized government securities have become a $2 billion market, according to data from 21.co, the parent company of 21Shares, a provider of Bitcoin ETFs.
Franklin Templeton has been a leader in the tokenized U.S. Treasurys sector but now faces strong competition, particularly from BlackRock’s BUIDL fund, which was tokenized through a collaboration with Securitize on Ethereum. BlackRockโs BUIDL product currently leads the market with $518.3 million in assets under management, giving it a 25.2% market share. In April, it overtook Franklin fund, though the Benji product remains in second place with $419.7 million in assets, representing a 20.4% market share.
Franklin has been involved with blockchain technology since 2018, running node validators and managing various crypto-related investment strategies. In 2024, the firm launched its spot Bitcoin ETF (EZBC) and a spot Ethereum ETF (EZET), which have attracted $450.4 million and $31.8 million in assets, respectively. The company has also hinted at plans to explore additional crypto funds in the future.
