Franklin Templeton Money Market Fund Launched on Aptos

Key Points:

• Franklin Templeton Money Market Fund was launched on the Aptos blockchain.
• Franklin Templeton’s blockchain initiatives include partnerships and diversified investment strategies.

Franklin Templeton, one of the world’s largest asset management companies, announced its OnChain U.S. Government Money Fund, with the ticker FOBXX, has gone live on the Aptos blockchain. This marks the fifth integration the firm has made with a blockchain network.

Read more: Franklin Templeton Tokenized Fund Now Launched on Avalanche

Franklin Templeton Money Market Fund Expands on Aptos

The Franklin Templeton Money Market Fund has also accumulated more than $427.95 million in assets under management, most of which constitute U.S. government securities, cash, and repurchase agreements. It tokenizes each share of the fund into a BENJI token that can be stored in digital wallets.

Aptos is a layer-1 blockchain, built with the Move programming language while not based on the EVM framework. The blockchain was founded by Mo Shaikh and Avery Ching, who previously worked on the Diem blockchain project from Meta.

It was launched in October 2022 and has processed over 1.7 billion transactions, including 115.4 million in one day in May 2024. Currently, Aptos has $545 million in total value locked, per DefiLlama data.

Blockchain-Driven Investments Gain Traction in Traditional Finance

Franklin Templeton Money Market Fund was the very first US-registered mutual fund to use blockchain technology when it went live on the Stellar network. Since then, the firm has expanded onto other blockchains such as Polygon and Arbitrum. The company has also explored other blockchain-related strategies, including investing in cryptocurrencies and blockchain-enabled traditional assets.

Roger Bayston, Franklin Templeton’s director of digital assets, said it had chosen the Aptos Network because it was the most appropriate to host the Benji platform. Such tokenization is becoming more common. BlackRock and ParaFi Capital have also moved to allow fractional ownership of assets on the blockchain.