Franklin Templeton's Benji money market fund surged from under $600M to $2.5B on Stellar by tokenizing a regulated fund natively on-chain. The discussion covers how 50,000 transactions cost $1.13 instead of $75,000, yield accrual by the second, regulatory approval, and institutional adoption through exchange collateral.
Franklin Templeton's Benji, the first U.S.-registered mutual fund to settle on-chain, grew from less than $600M to $2.5B in assets by demonstrating production benefits of native blockchain infrastructure. The discussion details how tokenizing the fund's shareholder ledger on Stellar eliminated $75,000 in costs per 50,000 transactions (now $1.13), reduced errors to zero on the blockchain side, and enabled daily yield accrual by the second, 365 days per year including weekends. Institutional adoption centers on a single killer use case: collateral. By living authentically on-chain, Benji tokens can move at 2 a.m. Sunday and immediately accrue yield for the new holder, unlocking derivatives trading and collateral strategies across multiple exchanges. The path to scale required regulatory dialogue with the SEC and solving the hard problem of making blockchain the authoritative book of record instead of a wrapper around legacy ledgers.
