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CEO Notes

Franklin Templeton joins Canton Network

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Marc Baumann, Sangam Bharti· November 19, 2025· 3 min read

Franklin Templeton just expanded its Benji Technology Platform, the blockchain stack that powers its tokenised mutual funds, onto the Canton Network. [NEWS]

Franklin Templeton manages $1.69T in assets. This will move FT’s $798M AUM to Canton immediately.

The goal? Institutional liquidity, settlement, and collateral management within a multi-bank environment. Let’s unpack.

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What happened

Franklin Templeton is connecting its proprietary blockchain infrastructure, which currently services assets such as the Franklin OnChain U.S. Government Money Fund (FOBXX), to Canton. Benji powered the world’s first U.S.-registered mutual fund on-chain back in 2021.

IOSCO observed that the scalability of DLT arrangements in finance is currently constrained by two key factors: the lack of cross-blockchain interoperability and credible settlement assets. The collaboration solves both challenges.

Zooming in: Fixed income products and Money Market Funds (MMFs) are taking the lead in commercial adoption. FOBXX’s pool of high-quality collateral, U.S. Government Money Fund shares, is shifting to the Canton network, positioning MMFs as the digital equivalent of T-Bills used in traditional markets.

This is a massive upgrade from Benji’s architecture.

  • Assets can be used for cross-institutional, wholesale activities
  • Privacy and access control for high-value, multi-party collateral management

Stepping back: Launched in 2023, Canton Network is growing rapidly:

  • July’25: First tokenised MMF with Goldman Sachs and BNY Mellon
  • July’25: $135M raised from BNP Paribas, DRW, Goldman Sachs, and others
  • Sept’25: BNP Paribas and HSBC joined the Canton Foundation

By the data: By October 2025, Canton Network was supporting over $3.6T in tokenised assets on-chain while processing $280B in repos daily.

The infrastructure play: Tokenisation market to grow by $14.2B (CAGR 19%) from 2026–2034, with the infrastructure layer: platforms, protocols, and tooling, capturing most of 2025’s revenue. Hence, the value in tokenisation is shifting from what’s being tokenised to how it’s built.

Architecture: Canton solves privacy through Daml, a smart contract language that defines exactly who can view or modify each contract. Its Private Contract Store keeps data local to each participant, enforcing privacy through authorisation rather than network-wide transparency. The result: a rights-based ledger where institutions retain full control over data access, enabling regulated firms to use blockchain without compromising secrecy.

Zooming out: FT’s participation reinforces a crucial structural element: the importance of issuer independence. This ensures that the supply side of tokenized assets (the issuers) is directly connected to the demand side (the market makers, custodians, and banks on Canton) without having to route all activity through a vertically integrated financial intermediary.

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Why it matters

  • Validation of neutrality. Financial institutions have piloted their solutions in a walled garden so far. Now, they are moving towards a shared infrastructure model, replacing proprietary, bank-centric ecosystems, for liquidity, global collateral motility, and interoperability with public blockchains. This also sets a blueprint for future wholesale DLT adoption.
  • Privacy is the primary enabler. Institutional adoption hinges on confidentiality, trading desks can’t have proprietary data exposed on public ledgers. The commitment to the Canton Network confirms institutional alignment on architectural guarantees regarding privacy and authorisation rules. Canton’s use of the Daml protocol and Private Contract Stores addresses this requirement by maintaining the necessary institutional confidentiality for cross-market activities.

Our take

The Franklin Templeton and Canton Network integration is the definitive establishment of the institutional hybrid tokenization model. For FT, the Benji-Canton link serves as a crucial liquidity bridge, and the partnership acts as a powerful de-risking mechanism. The integration instantly validates Canton’s position, strengthening its role as the premier blockchain hub for regulated tokenised financial instruments.

Tokenisation provides shared market utility rather than a single entity’s profit center. From JP Morgan to Franklin, all the big institutions are doing that. The greatest competitive advantage in institutional DLT is shifting from being the best single issuer or the largest proprietary ledger to becoming the most interconnected hub. This strategic disparity is expected to trigger a rapid acceleration in network adoption once the threshold for utility is crossed, potentially isolating proprietary systems to internal or closed-loop workflows.

Take care,

Marc & team

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