Franklin Templeton Expands Tokenized Fund Platform to Canton Network

By Vince Dioquino

Franklin Templeton has expanded its proprietary Benji Technology Platform to the Canton Network, a private blockchain for regulated institutions, in a move aimed at deepening its role in the fast-paced market for tokenized financial products.

The integration allows the $1.5 trillion asset manager to offer its tokenized funds and investment vehicles to banks, market makers, and trading firms active on Canton’s Global Collateral Network.

It’s meant “to deliver a private blockchain option alongside the interoperability clients expect,” Roger Bayston, head of digital assets at Franklin Templeton, said in a statement shared with Decrypt.

Benji is Franklin Templeton’s blockchain-native infrastructure for issuing, recording, and settling tokenized fund shares. It supports real-time transfers between approved wallets, enforces compliance at the protocol level, and allows assets to settle in stablecoins or cash equivalents.

While initially deployed on public chains such as Stellar, Polygon, Arbitrum, Avalanche, and Aptos, Benji’s expansion to Canton marks a shift toward permissioned, purpose-built infrastructure designed for institutional-grade privacy, composability, and regulatory alignment.

Benji was initially presented to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in 2019 and launched publicly in 2021 with the Franklin OnChain U.S. Government Money Fund (FOBXX), the first SEC-registered fund to process transactions and record ownership on a public blockchain.

The product has since accrued over $844 million in distributed asset value, according to data from RWA.xyz.

Canton Network, meanwhile, is touted as a “public-permissioned” hybrid approach to blockchain design built for institutional coordination, according to its Whitepaper. 

While Bitcoin and Ethereum are considered permissionless—meaning anyone can join and use the network—Canton distinguishes itself by synchronizing with other domains in its ecosystem in parallel to overcome scaling bottlenecks.

Its Global Synchronizer maintains consensus across those connected sub-ledgers, allowing real-time, privacy-preserving settlement of tokenized assets without exposing counterparty positions.

The network supposedly processes over $6 trillion in tokenized U.S. Treasury activity and supports $280 billion in daily repo transactions, according to its own estimates. Average daily transactions have reached around 807,000, according to data on the digital asset terminal The Tie.

Canton Coin, the Canton Network’s native token, powers transactions, governance, and participation across its regulated blockchain.

Hours after its market debut on Monday, the token plunged roughly 30% despite a wave of exchange listings on KuCoin, Bybit, and MEXC, and buzz around its tokenized-treasury ecosystem, following a $540 million private investment from publicly-listed Tharimmune Inc.

The token opened trading at roughly $0.14 with a $5 billion market cap, according to  CoinGecko data. Its price has since recovered to about $0.12, with trading volume topping $54 million and a market cap of $4.3 billion.

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