Franklin Templeton’s tokenized US government money fund adds Base to supported chains

Key Takeaways

Franklin Templeton’s fund FOBXX is now available on Base blockchain.
The expansion makes FOBXX the first large asset manager to launch on Base.

Franklin Templeton’s OnChain US Government Money Market Fund is now tradeable on Coinbase’s Base, said the firm in a recent statement. With this integration, Franklin Templeton has become the first major asset manager to directly launch on the layer 2 blockchain.

New chain unlocked. Benji, our proprietary blockchain-integrated recordkeeping system, is now live on @base! With this announcement, Franklin Templeton is the first asset manager to build a tokenized fund on Base.

Base is a layer 2 blockchain built on Ethereum designed to… pic.twitter.com/lRij7HchSl

— Franklin Templeton Digital Assets (@FTDA_US) October 31, 2024

The $410 million fund, which trades under the ticker FOBXX, is already available on five other blockchains, including Stellar, Aptos, Avalanche, Arbitrum, and Polygon, with Stellar acting as the primary network. Base becomes the sixth option for investors.

Launched in 2021, FOBXX marked the first money-market fund to utilize a public blockchain for recording transactions and ownership. Earlier this year, Franklin Templeton enabled peer-to-peer transfer capabilities for FOBXX, improving its utility within the digital asset ecosystem.

The fund currently stands as the second-largest tokenized fund in the market, just behind BlackRock’s USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL), which has over $518 million in assets under management, as of October 31.

Since going live last year, Base has accumulated more than $8 billion in total value locked (TVL), ranking second only to Arbitrum among layer 2 blockchains. The network processed 55% more transactions in the third quarter compared to the second quarter.