Franklin Templeton’s onchain money fund goes live on Aptos blockchain

Aptos Foundation and global asset management giant Franklin Templeton have announced the integration of the Franklin OnChain US Government Money Fund (FOBXX) on the Aptos blockchain. 

Powered by the Move programming language, Aptos’ layer-1 blockchain will now support the Treasury-backed fund, integrating real-world assets in non-Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) blockchain environments. 

The money market fund primarily invests in US government securities, cash and repurchase agreements collateralized by government securities. At the time of writing, it has surpassed over $427.95 million in assets under management. 

It is the first US-registered mutual fund to use blockchain technology (initially on the Stellar network) to process transactions and record share ownership. Each share of the fund is tokenized and represented as one BENJI token, which can be stored in digital wallets.

“To reach that future, we need to connect not just the TradFi and DeFi worlds, but EVM and non-EVM networks as well,” Bashar Lazaar, head of grants and ecosystem at Aptos Foundation, said in a statement.

Aptos was founded by Mo Shaikh and Avery Ching, both previously involved in Meta’s blockchain project Diem. When the tech giant decided to wind down the Diem project, Shaikh and Ching decided to leverage the technology to create Aptos.

The network has seen a surge in activity through 2024, achieving a record 115.4 million transactions in a single day in May.

Since its launch in October 2022, more than 1.7 billion transactions have been completed on Aptos. According to data from DefiLlama, the blockchain currently holds $545 million in total value locked. 

“We chose the Aptos Network given its unique characteristics, which meet our rigorous suitability standards for the Benji platform,” said Roger Bayston, head of digital assets at Franklin Templeton. 

Tokenization of funds is rapidly evolving among traditional financial products by enabling fractional ownership of assets. Other players tokenizing funds worth millions of dollars include BlackRock and ParaFi Capital.

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