Franklin Templeton's $410M Fund FOBXX Expands to Base Network
Franklin Templeton's Tokenized Money Fund Adds Base Support
Franklin Templeton’s OnChain US Government Money Market Fund, with assets totaling $410 million under the ticker FOBXX, has now become tradeable on Coinbase’s Base, a notable move announced by the firm.
This integration positions Franklin Templeton as the first major asset manager to directly launch on Base, adding the platform to its list of supported blockchains. With this addition, the fund is now accessible on six networks: Stellar, Aptos, Avalanche, Arbitrum, Polygon, and the newly included Base. Stellar remains the primary network among these options.
First launched in 2021, FOBXX gained recognition as the pioneering money-market fund leveraging a public blockchain for transaction and ownership record-keeping. Earlier in 2024, Franklin Templeton introduced peer-to-peer transfer capabilities for FOBXX, boosting its use case within the digital asset ecosystem.
The fund's strategy emphasizes high current income while safeguarding shareholder capital and maintaining a stable share price of $1 per share, investing at least 99.5% of its assets in U.S. government securities, cash, and collateralized repurchase agreements.
Currently, FOBXX ranks as the second-largest tokenized fund globally, trailing only behind BlackRock’s USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL), which holds over $518 million in assets as of the end of October. The move underscores Franklin Templeton’s commitment to innovating within the digital finance landscape, offering more diversified access for its investors.
Base, Coinbase’s Layer 2 blockchain, has made significant strides since its inception last year, amassing over $8 billion in total value locked (TVL). This figure places it as the second-highest among Layer 2 solutions according to L2Beat data, following Arbitrum. On DefiLlama, which counts the TVL excluding native tokens, Base is the biggest L2 by TVL. Impressively, Base witnessed a 55% surge in transactions during the third quarter compared to the previous quarter, illustrating its growing adoption.
Base enhanced its security framework by implementing fault proofs on its mainnet, allowing users to challenge invalid transactions and promoting decentralization. This transition to a more decentralized model was achieved through close collaboration with Optimism, completing the shift from testnet to mainnet in half the time taken by its counterpart. Base is set to further solidify its position by forming a Security Council to oversee network upgrades, aiming for full decentralization by 2025.
This article has been refined and enhanced by ChatGPT.
