Franklin Templeton

Franklin Templeton is one of the world's largest investment management firms, founded in 1947 and managing approximately $1.74 trillion in assets as of April 2026. Its primary presence in the Solana ecosystem comes through BENJI, the onchain share token of the Franklin OnChain US Government Money Fund (ticker: FOBXX) — the first US-registered mutual fund to use a public blockchain as its official system of record.

What BENJI Is

BENJI is not a stablecoin or a synthetic product. Each BENJI token represents a single share in FOBXX, a regulated money market fund registered under the Investment Company Act of 1940 and subject to SEC Rule 2a-7. The fund invests almost entirely in US government securities, fully collateralized repurchase agreements, and cash, targeting a stable net asset value of $1.00 per share. Holding BENJI means holding a legal interest in that fund, with the same protections and suitability standards that apply to traditional money market fund investors.

The blockchain does not custody the underlying Treasury bills. Instead, Franklin Templeton operates a proprietary transfer agent system — called Benji — that maintains official share ownership records onchain. Blockchain entries carry the same legal weight as entries in a conventional transfer agent ledger.

How Yield Works

Rather than rebasing the token price, FOBXX distributes daily dividends by minting new BENJI tokens directly into each holder's allowlisted wallet. A holder's token balance increases every US trading day — and, unusually for a money market fund, dividends also post on weekends and US holidays, producing 365 distributions per year. The result is a token that accrues yield visibly and automatically, without requiring any action from the holder.

Solana Deployment

Franklin Templeton expanded FOBXX to Solana in February 2025, when the fund held approximately $594 million in total assets. Solana was the seventh blockchain to receive the deployment, following Stellar (the fund's original chain since April 2021), Polygon, Arbitrum, Aptos, Avalanche, and Base. Ethereum and BNB Smart Chain were added subsequently, bringing the total to nine chains as of mid-2025.

On Solana, BENJI is available through the institutional investor channel at Franklin Templeton's dedicated digital assets platform. Holders on Solana own shares in the same FOBXX pool and earn the same dividends as holders on any other chain. Cross-chain movement requires transfer agent coordination: tokens are burned on the origin chain and re-minted on the destination after wallet verification.

Access and Compliance

BENJI uses an allowlist model. Only wallets that have completed Franklin Templeton's KYC and AML onboarding — either through the Benji Investments mobile app (available on Android and iOS) or through authorized institutional channels at invest.digitalassets.franklintempleton.com — can receive or hold BENJI tokens. Transfers to non-allowlisted wallets fail at the contract level. This design allows Franklin Templeton to maintain the same investor eligibility standards onchain that apply to its traditional fund operations.

BENJI stands apart in the tokenized Treasury landscape for wrapping a US-registered fund rather than an offshore private structure. BlackRock's BUIDL, Hashnote's USYC, and Ondo Finance's OUSG are structured as private funds and restrict participation to qualified purchasers, requiring a minimum $5 million investment threshold. BENJI, as a 40-Act mutual fund, is available to retail investors who complete standard KYC — a meaningfully lower barrier.

Security and Auditing

The smart contracts underlying BENJI's blockchain deployments have been audited by Trail of Bits and Ancilia, covering the token minting, transfer, and allowlist enforcement logic across supported chains.

Scale and Growth

When FOBXX launched on Solana in February 2025, total fund assets stood at $594 million, making it the third-largest tokenized money market fund at the time. By April 2026, the BENJI suite had grown to approximately $1.98 billion in total assets under management, and by July 2026, the fund crossed $2.5 billion — representing more than 100% growth year-to-date. Investor count grew by more than 140% between April 2024 and March 2026, accelerating after the May 2025 expansion of peer-to-peer transfer capability to retail holders. Cumulative peer-to-peer transfer volume reached $211 million through March 31, 2026.

Peer-to-Peer Transfers and Composability

BENJI introduced peer-to-peer share transferability — a capability that traditional money market fund shares do not support — first for institutional investors in April 2024, then for retail investors in May 2025. This allows allowlisted holders to send BENJI directly to other allowlisted wallets on the same chain, opening the fund to potential use as collateral or settlement medium in onchain contexts. A USDC-to-BENJI conversion pathway was added in June 2024, enabling holders to move between stablecoins and the fund without leaving the onchain environment.

In May 2026, Franklin Templeton extended the BENJI platform to allow regulated fund shares to be held and traded 24/7 directly within crypto wallets, moving from experimental blockchain use to wallet-native asset management.

Broader Digital Asset Strategy

Franklin Templeton's blockchain work extends beyond BENJI and FOBXX. The firm launched the first fully tokenized UCITS fund in Luxembourg in 2024 and the first retail tokenized fund in Singapore in 2025, both on Stellar. The SEC cleared Franklin Templeton's mutual funds and ETFs to invest in BENJI, enabling it to be held within other Franklin Templeton products. The firm is also pursuing the acquisition of 250 Digital, a spinoff of crypto venture fund CoinFund, to expand its institutional digital asset capabilities.

Sandy Kaul serves as Head of Digital Assets and Innovation, overseeing the firm's tokenization and blockchain strategy.

Place in the Solana Ecosystem

FOBXX on Solana represents one of the most significant deployments of a regulated, US-registered financial product on the network. Unlike many onchain yield instruments, BENJI carries the regulatory clarity of a SEC-registered fund and the institutional credibility of a 75-year-old asset manager. For Solana-native investors seeking compliant, government-backed yield, and for institutional participants wanting to hold short-duration Treasuries in blockchain-native form, Franklin Templeton's BENJI is the only product of its kind on the network.