Franklin Templeton Brings $410M Tokenized Treasury Fund to Coinbase’s Base Network

Asset management giant Franklin Templeton has expanded its OnChain U.S. Government Money Market Fund (FOBXX) to Base, Coinbase’s Ethereum layer-2 network, marking the first major asset manager to launch on the platform.

The $410 million fund, which invests in U.S. government securities and cash equivalents, is now available across six different blockchain networks, with Base joining existing deployments on Stellar, Arbitrum, Polygon, Avalanche, and Aptos.

“This is the first large asset manager to directly launch on Base, a clear signal to investors and issuers of what’s to come,” said Anthony Bassili, head of tokenization at Coinbase. “Financial institutions like Franklin Templeton are increasingly taking advantage of fast, low-cost onchain technology to modernize the financial system.”

The expansion comes as Base continues to gain traction in the cryptocurrency ecosystem. Since its 2022 launch, the network has accumulated over $8 billion in total value locked (TVL), establishing itself as Ethereum’s second most popular scaling solution behind Arbitrum. Coinbase reported a 55% quarter-over-quarter increase in Base transactions in Q3 2024.

FOBXX, which generates annualized returns of approximately 4.7%, was pioneering in its use of public blockchain technology for official transaction record-keeping when it launched in 2021. The fund is accessible through Franklin Templeton’s Benji Investments mobile platform.

The move represents another significant step in the convergence of traditional finance and blockchain technology, as major asset managers increasingly explore tokenized real-world assets. FOBXX currently competes with BlackRock’s USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL) in the growing tokenized Treasury market.