Franklin Templeton Brings Tokenized Investment Products to BNB Chain
The race to tokenize traditional finance is intensifying, and Franklin Templeton has taken another step by deploying its Benji Technology Platform on BNB Chain.
The $1.6 trillion asset manager is aiming to bring regulated investment products to a wider crypto-native audience while experimenting with lower-cost blockchain infrastructure.
BNB Chain’s role in the expansion reflects its strategy of positioning itself as a home for real-world assets. The network already hosts tokenized credit products and money market funds, and Franklin Templeton’s entry underscores its capacity to handle large-scale institutional products. “This shows BNB Chain can support regulated assets at scale,” said Sarah Song, who leads business development at the network.
Benji is not new to tokenization. In 2021, the platform powered the Franklin OnChain U.S. Government Money Fund (FOBXX), the first U.S.-registered mutual fund launched directly on blockchain rails. Each share of the fund is mirrored by a BENJI token, with more than $730 million in value now represented onchain — most of it sitting on Stellar. Since then, Benji has spread across Ethereum, Solana, Polygon, Avalanche, Arbitrum, and Base, with BNB Chain becoming its newest venue.
Roger Bayston, Franklin Templeton’s head of digital assets, said the expansion is about meeting investors “where they’re active” while proving that tokenization can be scaled securely and compliantly. The move comes just days after the firm disclosed a new partnership with Binance to explore broader tokenization ventures, hinting at a coordinated push to cement its role as a leader in digital markets.
Tokenization is fast becoming a priority across traditional finance. Nasdaq has filed to allow tokenized versions of stocks and ETFs to trade alongside their conventional counterparts, potentially as early as 2026. Advocates argue such products can speed up settlement, cut costs, and make previously inaccessible markets transparent to a wider set of investors.
Still, skepticism lingers. Analysts at JPMorgan caution that fragmented rules, legal uncertainties around onchain assets, and concerns about protocol reliability continue to hold back institutional adoption. For Franklin Templeton, however, the calculus is clear: tokenization is no longer a side experiment but a central pillar of how the future of finance will be built.
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