In a landmark merger of traditional finance and cutting-edge blockchain innovation, SolanaFloor announced in a recent tweet that trillion-dollar global asset manager Franklin Templeton will be launching an on-chain mutual fund on the Solana network.

🚨BREAKING BIG: $1.3 trillion asset manager Franklin Templeton (@FTI_US) plans to launch a Mutual Fund on @Solana blockchain.

Source: Solana Breakpoint 2024 pic.twitter.com/F7c5KdEspF

— SolanaFloor (@SolanaFloor) September 20, 2024

The firm has about $1.3 trillion in Assets Under management (AUM), including Fixed Income, Equity, Alternative, Multi-asset, Long-Term, and Cash Management.

Mike Reed, leader of the Partnership Development team at Franklin Templeton, initially revealed this announcement during his keynote speech at the Solana Breakpoint 2024 event in Singapore.

Franklin Templeton Leverages Blockchain Solutions

According to Reed, the firm decided to leverage blockchain to bring money market funds on-chain due to the potential of blockchain solutions to streamline operations and enhance productivity in the financial industry.

He said, “We thought if we wanted to use the blockchain efficiently, we wanted to have as many ledger entries as we possibly could.” 

Reed continued his speech “Rather than do this in kind of an inauthentic way by hiring an outside vendor to do the tokenization for us, we decided to build our own development team.” 

The development team designed and implemented a digital wallet framework and on-chain transfer agency to facilitate native blockchain integration for its mutual fund.

At its inception, the on-chain money fund garnered little external attention, but rising interest rates and market volatility sparked interest from venture capital firms and Web3 businesses seeking effective treasury management alternatives.

Why Choose Solana Blockchain?

In his closing remarks, Reed disclosed the rationale behind the asset management firm’s decision to partner with Solana. He praised Solana’s speed and affordability, which facilitates swift and cost-effective transactions.

He concluded, “The standards used on Solana are extremely important to us and we are working on developing standards that we believe should be used across the industry. Lastly, the Solana team has been absolutely fantastic to work with and their development tools are second to none.”

In a recent development, Solana Mobile, a subsidiary of Solana Labs, announced the launch of its latest Web3 smartphone, Solana Seeker, at the TOKEN2049 event in Singapore.