BNB Chain Holds 59.8% Of Franklin Templeton’s $2.55B Onchain Funds

Key Points

• Franklin Templeton now holds about $1.5 billion in tokenized fund shares on BNB Chain, roughly 59.8% of its onchain assets, per Crypto Briefing.
• The firm’s onchain footprint sits near $2.55 billion across ten blockchains, and the BENJI token alone accounts for about $760 million.
• An August 2026 SEC no-action letter clears BENJI for collateral use, but the token stays permissioned, so $1,000 wallets reach it only through approved protocols.

Franklin Templeton now holds about $1.5 billion in tokenized fund shares on BNB Chain, roughly 59.8% of a $2.55 billion onchain footprint spread across ten networks, Crypto Briefing reported on Oct. 16. When Benji first expanded to the chain in September 2025, digital assets head Roger Bayston said, “Our goal is to meet more investors where they’re active.” For your wallet, the chain count matters less than the August SEC no-action letter that lets Franklin Templeton use BENJI as collateral. That is where a money fund token starts competing with your stablecoins.

Franklin Templeton’s $1.5B BNB Chain Bet Overtakes Stellar

Franklin Templeton runs tokenized funds on ten blockchains, but one of them now carries most of the load.

About $1.5 billion of its tokenized fund shares sit on BNB Chain as of mid-October. That is 59.8% of the firm’s onchain assets.

It is also a reversal. The flagship Franklin OnChain U.S. Government Money Fund, ticker FOBXX, launched on Stellar in April 2021.

FOBXX was the first US-registered mutual fund to use a public blockchain for transactions and ownership records. The BENJI token represents its shares.

BNB Chain only arrived in September 2025, through a partnership with Binance. Roughly a year later, the newcomer has overtaken the original home.

The climb was steep. Franklin Templeton’s holdings on BNB Chain surged more than 1,200% in a single month in early 2026.

For a DeFi user, that makes BNB Chain the first place to watch for new BENJI integrations.

Where The $2.55B Benji Footprint Meets DeFi Collateral

Benji is Franklin Templeton’s own tokenization platform. It issues fund shares and records who owns them on a public ledger, not a back-office database.

Total assets on Benji reached between $2.5 billion and $2.6 billion by October 2026. The BENJI token accounts for about $760 million of that.

The firm overall manages as much as $1.83 trillion, so its chain choices carry weight well beyond its own balance sheet.

Now the part that touches your wallet. In August 2026, the SEC issued a no-action letter allowing Franklin Templeton to use BENJI for cash management and collateral purposes.

For a DeFi user, this matters less as a chain-share milestone than as a test of whether a money fund token can replace stablecoins as collateral.

Crypto Briefing makes the same point. A government money fund token posted as collateral competes with cash and stablecoins for that job, and it may earn yield while it sits there.

The source gives no BENJI rate, so there is no clean yield comparison against Aave or Compound this time.

You can compare tokenized fund liquidity across chains as new data lands.

BENJI Collateral Stays Permissioned For $1K Wallets

Roger Bayston, head of digital assets at Franklin Templeton, has framed the effort around making funds easier for investors to access.

He has also stressed that the firm wants to expand what tokenization can do while keeping security and compliance at the center.

That compliance focus is the catch for retail.

WhenCap cleared Franklin Templeton’s BENJI compliance review in June, our coverage found every BENJI integration needs direct approval from Franklin Templeton Digital Assets.

So a $1,000 wallet cannot simply post BENJI to an open lending pool. Access runs through approved protocols.

BNB Chain sees the scale as proof of fit.

At the 2025 launch, Sarah Song, head of business development at BNB Chain, said the move “demonstrates that BNB Chain can support regulated, real-world assets at scale.”

Two numbers decide what comes next. Watch whether BNB Chain’s share climbs past 59.8%, and whether Benji pushes beyond its $2.5 billion to $2.6 billion range.

Then watch for the first approved BNB Chain protocol to accept BENJI as collateral under the SEC letter.

Franklin Templeton has picked its favorite chain. Whether BENJI collateral ever reaches permissionless wallets is what your portfolio actually depends on.

Tracking where tokenized funds actually trade? The Secondary Markets desk follows which chains win the liquidity, and when retail wallets get in.