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Franklin Templeton plans to launch its Franklin OnChain US Government Money Fund (FOBXX) on Coinbase’s network, Base, marking the first digital, or “tokenized”, fund on this platform. The fund, launched previously on other blockchain networks, uniquely outsources much of its reporting to blockchain networks’ public ledgers. FOBXX manages around $435m in assets with annual returns of around 4.7%. The move to Base is aimed at increasing access to tokenized real-world assets amid a rising demand for digital tokens of highly liquid, yield-bearing assets.

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Franklin Templeton is going to launch its digital money fund through a network called Base, which is a product by Coinbase. The fund’s name is Franklin OnChain US Government Money Fund (FOBXX), and it’s the first digital, or “tokenized”, fund on Base, according to a Franklin Templeton post on a platform called X.

The FOBXX was first created last year and it has already had launches on blockchain networks such as Stellar, Polygon, and Arbitrum. Franklin Templeton is different from other managers of digital funds as it outsources a significant amount of its reporting requirements, like records of share ownership, to blockchain networks’ public ledgers.

Roger Bayston, the person in charge of digital assets at Franklin Templeton, has said they are the only product that is currently using public distributed ledger technologies for official transaction record-keeping. The launch of FOBXX on Base should show that US regulators consider Base’s public ledger a legitimate way for keeping financial records.

A money fund is a type of investment that gets investors low-risk yields by holding super liquid assets like short-term Treasury bills and commercial papers. FOBXX currently manages around $435 million in assets and has been generating returns of around 4.7% yearly as of October 2024. You can access this through a platform called Benji Investments that’s owned by Franklin Templeton.

By launching it on Base, Franklin Templeton wants to increase the accessibility of its tokenized real-world assets (RWAs). Since Base was launched back in 2023, it has become the second most popular layer-2 scaling solution on Ethereum, with an estimated total value of $8 billion. Articles suggest that tokenized RWAs – from money funds to artworks – represent a market opportunity that’s worth $30-trillion globally. There’s a rising demand for products that turn T-bills and other highly liquid yield-bearing assets into digital tokens.

FOBXX’s biggest rival is reportedly the BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund, managed assets of around $530 million, as per data from RWA.xyz.

Source: Cointelegraph