Avalanche Becomes Latest Blockchain to Support Franklin Templeton’s Tokenized Money Market Fund

Franklin Templeton’s OnChain U.S. Government Money Market Fund (FOBXX) has expanded its availability to the Avalanche network in a bid to expand the fund’s base.

“I think the Avalanche ecosystem represents a super robust network that allows us to deliver high quality attributes and characteristics to our customers,” Roger Bayston, head of digital assets at Franklin Templeton told CoinDesk.

The fund’s official record of ownership is kept on the Stellar network and the fund can also use Polygon and Arbitrum for certain accounts. Avalanche is the latest blockchain in Franklin’s effort to expand access to the fund.

“For us, why we’re very excited to have Franklin Templeton’s Benji app and platform deployed on Avalanche is really twofold,” said Morgan Krupetsky, Head of Capital Markets and Institutions at Ava Labs. “On the one hand, the money market funds contract in and of itself and potentially as a payment mechanism represents a foundational and fundamental piece to a broader tokenized asset ecosystem and capabilities.”

“But two, being able to work with the team to deliver and bring to bear real world utilities and use cases for users today that are potentially off chain that now have these new suite capabilities and access points that they don’t have today or are more cumbersome today.”

FOBXX launched in 2021 and became the first money market fund to use a public blockchain to record transactions and ownership. Three years later, it currently stands at a $420 million market cap.