- Franklin Templeton has launched the OnChain US Government Money Fund (FOBXX) on Aptos
- FOBXX has a market cap of over $435 million, second among tokenized US Treasuries behind BlackRock fund BUIDL
Franklin Templeton has extended its OnChain US Government Money Fund (FOBXX) to the Aptos layer-1 blockchain, marking another step in the firm’s tokenization strategy.
The $1.6 trillion asset manager, which also offers the Franklin Bitcoin ETF (EZBC) and Franklin Ethereum ETF (EZET), announced the Aptos launch on Wednesday, October 2, 2024. This follows the fund’s earlier expansion to the Avalanche network and continues Franklin Templeton’s push to make traditional investment products available through blockchain infrastructure.
Introduced in 2021, FOBXX is a US Treasury–backed money market fund that tokenizes cash-equivalent assets to deliver the speed, accessibility, and composability of on-chain instruments to investors while maintaining exposure to short-term government securities.
By adding support on Aptos, a non-Ethereum Virtual Machine (non-EVM) chain, Franklin Templeton broadens institutional and retail access through its Benji Investments platform. On Aptos, the fund will be represented by Franklin’s BENJI token, a bridge between traditional finance (TradFi) and decentralized finance (DeFi). Earlier in 2024, Franklin tokenized the money market fund on Polygon and Stellar and later expanded it to Arbitrum, reflecting a multi-chain approach.
Tokenized treasuries market growth
Data from RWA.xyz shows FOBXX currently ranks as the second-largest tokenized treasury fund, with assets exceeding $435 million. The leading US Treasury-backed tokenized fund is BlackRock’s USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL), which launched on Ethereum and manages more than $518 million.
Investor demand for real-world asset (RWA) products has grown, particularly for tokenized treasury and cash-equivalent offerings. Other notable treasury-focused tokens include Ondo’s US Dollar Yield (USDY), Hashnote’s Short Duration Yield Coin (USYC), and OpenEden’s TBILL Vault (TBILL). Market capitalizations for USDY, USYC, and TBILL are approximately $420 million, $280 million, and $116 million, respectively. Ondo expanded USDY to the Sui network earlier in the year.
Overall, the total value of tokenized US treasuries, cash-equivalents, and bonds tracked by RWA.xyz has climbed to over $2.27 billion, up from roughly $769 million on January 1, 2024. At the start of the year, FOBXX made up about $325 million of that market. BlackRock’s BUIDL, launched in March 2024, surpassed $500 million in assets by July, underscoring rapid growth in the sector.