Franklin Templeton extended its on-chain government fund to Polygon

Franklin Templeton said on April 26, 2023 that its Franklin OnChain U.S. Government Money Fund, ticker FOBXX, was supported on the Polygon blockchain. The step extended an existing regulated money-market fund beyond its original Stellar-based recordkeeping setup and into an Ethereum-linked ecosystem.

The development mattered because this was not a crypto issuer wrapping an unregistered yield product in token language. FOBXX was a U.S.-registered mutual fund whose transfer agent used a proprietary blockchain-integrated system for the official share-ownership record. Franklin said one fund share was represented by one BENJI token. Adding Polygon therefore connected public-blockchain infrastructure to a conventional investment vehicle governed under the Investment Company Act of 1940.

A filing prepared the multi-chain move

The strongest contemporaneous record is a prospectus supplement dated April 25, 2023 and filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. It changed the fund’s disclosure from a system using Stellar to one using “one or more” public blockchain networks. More specifically, it said Stellar remained the primary network but Polygon could be used for certain accounts, subject to eligibility. It also described transfers between Stellar and Polygon as interoperability operations in which shares would be burned on one network and delivered on the other without creating new shares in the official record.

That distinction limits what “launched on Polygon” meant on April 26. Franklin was expanding the recordkeeping rails for fund shares, not moving the fund’s portfolio into cryptocurrencies. The SEC-filed supplement said blockchain recording did not change the investments and that the fund would not invest in cryptocurrencies.

FOBXX instead was required to place at least 99.5% of total assets in government securities, cash, and repurchase agreements fully collateralized by government securities or cash. It sought a stable $1.00 share price, but the prospectus warned that the objective was not guaranteed and that the investment was not insured or guaranteed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation or another government agency.

Scale and institutional significance

Franklin reported on April 24, 2023 that FOBXX had surpassed $270 million in assets under management as of March 31, 2023. That is an issuer-reported point-in-time figure, not an independently calculated on-chain balance and not an April 26 closing value. The same release said Stellar was then the network used for transaction activity, making the April 25 disclosure amendment and April 26 Polygon announcement a clear chronological expansion rather than the fund’s original launch.

The practical significance was distribution and infrastructure choice. Franklin’s head of digital assets said Polygon compatibility would connect the fund more closely to the broader Ethereum-based digital ecosystem. CoinDesk independently reported the announcement on April 26. Those records establish the decision and its stated rationale; they do not establish that Polygon immediately generated new subscriptions, lower costs, faster investor redemptions, or secondary-market liquidity.

Franklin also claimed its blockchain-integrated system had produced greater security, faster processing and reduced costs. Those were contemporaneous company claims, not audited comparative measurements supplied with the announcement. The SEC supplement was more cautious: it described blockchain use as new and evolving for mutual funds, warned of technological and operational threats, and said the investment manager had limited blockchain-industry experience.

What April 26 established

The verified conclusion is narrow. On April 26, 2023, Franklin Templeton made Polygon an eligible recordkeeping network for certain FOBXX accounts, supported by a prospectus amendment effective in the event-day record. The change demonstrated a regulated asset manager using multiple public blockchains for mutual-fund share records while leaving portfolio assets, transfer-agent control, identity checks and business-hours processing intact. It did not turn BENJI into a freely transferable cryptocurrency, guarantee a dollar value, or prove that multi-chain recordkeeping would achieve scale.