Franklin Templeton Takes Its Tokenized Treasury Fund to Base, Becomes First Asset Manager on the Layer 2

Franklin Templeton’s OnChain U.S. Government Money Market Fund can now be traded on Coinbase’s Base blockchain.

This marks the first time an asset manager is building on the layer-2 blockchain.

The fund, which has a $410 million market cap, is available on five other blockchains, with Stellar being the primary network.

Wall Street giant Franklin Templeton said its OnChain U.S. Government Money Market Fund (FOBXX) is now available on Coinbase’s (COIN) layer-2 blockchain, Base.

Base becomes the sixth blockchain that shares of the fund can be traded on. They are already available on Arbitrum, Polygon, Avalanche, Aptos and Stellar, which functions as the primary public blockchain.

“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.

The layer 2, which went live in 2022, represented a big step in the evolution of Coinbase, opening a new venture for the exchange beyond being a marketplace for crypto. It has since become a fast-growing part of the company’s business, handling 55% more transactions in the third quarter than in the second.

Base quickly became one of the most popular layer-2 blockchains in the ecosystem. It currently has more than $8 billion in total value locked (TVL), according to data from L2Beat, quickly moving past some of its more established competitors. Only Arbitrum has more.

Layer 2s are designed to execute transactions faster and cheaper than the base Ethereum blockchain, making them a popular choice for products like FOBXX.

“Financial institutions like Franklin Templeton are increasingly taking advantage of fast, low-cost onchain technology to modernize the financial system,” Bassili said.

Launched in 2021, FOBXX was the first money-market fund to use a public blockchain to record transactions and ownership. The fund is the second-largest tokenized fund on the market, with a $410 million market cap, according to rwa.xyz.