Franklin Templeton has added features to its Benji technology platform, the asset manager’s proprietary blockchain-integrated stack to facilitate trading, management, and administration of token-based investments, which it believes will provide a first mover advantage as digital assets disrupt traditional finance.

Max Gokhman, deputy chief investment officer for Franklin Templeton Investment Solutions, told Markets Media: “One of the reasons I joined Franklin Templeton after previously founding my own digital asset hedge fund is because this firm recognizes that you need to innovate and you need to be first.”

He joined Franklin Templeton in December 2022 from AlphaTrAI, an asset manager fully powered by deep learning, where had been president and chief investment officer. Gokhman joined as head of MosaiQ Investment Strategy, a proprietary multi-asset platform for portfolio construction, management, and analysis before taking on his current role in February this year.

One of the biggest lessons from disruption is that giants get toppled, and they get toppled quite quickly, according to Gokhman. He continued that a lot of firms say ‘we’ve got trillions of dollars under management and we’re totally safe’ but the reality is that no one is.

“When it comes to digital assets, the innovators are going to take the lead and as adoption increases, you want to be in pole position,” he said. “If you’re on pole you get to win the race, because you have a huge advantage.”

In addition, Gokhman argued that scale is important, so a large asset manager like Franklin Templeton can make a big difference. The California-based company had $1.57 trillion in assets under management as of 31 May 2025 and more than 1,500 investment professionals around the world.

Benji technology platform

Franklin Templeton has been investing in and building its own blockchain-based technologies since 2017 and launched the first U.S.-registered mutual fund in 2021 that used blockchain-integrated technology to process transactions and record share ownership. The firm was also the first traditional asset manager to launch a tokenized money market fund back in 2022, represented by BENJI tokens.

Venture capital firm a16zcrypto said in a blog that BENJI tokens act as the legal system of record, making onchain entries the legally binding source of truth.

“This distinction matters because fund administration — books, records, and compliance — dictates who is legally recognized as an owner, how disputes are resolved, how regulators view the asset, and how investor protections apply,” said the blog.

a16zcrypto added that blockchains can expand distribution, automate fund operations, and tap into onchain liquidity for asset managers.

“Tokenized funds and real-world assets (RWAs) offer new wrappers that make asset-management products more accessible and composable — particularly to a global investor base that increasingly expects 24/7 access, instant settlement, and programmable trading,” added a16zcrypto. “At the same time, onchain rails can dramatically simplify back-office workflows, from NAV calculations to cap table management.”

Franklin Templeton’s tokenized fund is available on a number of public blockchains, which Gokhman said show Franklin Templeton’s commitment to the space.

“There are some use cases for private blockchain but we think public blockchains are the future,” Gokhman added. “I think it is a really powerful statement and we are literally putting our money where our mouth is.”

a16zcrypt said asset managers can reach new classes of investors by listing tokenized share classes on public blockchains without compromising their traditional transfer-agent record keeping and highlighted that Franklin Templeton’s tokenized money market fund is distributed across Aptos, Arbitrum, Avalanche, Base, Ethereum, Polygon, Solana, and Stellar.

“By partnering with well-known public networks, the liquidity profile of these products also improves from the blockchains’ respective ecosystem partners — including centralized exchanges, market makers, and DeFi protocols,” added the blog.

2/ BENJI is available on 8 blockchains

– BENJI initially launched on Stellar, which now holds the largest market share at 63.6%.
– Arbitrum, the third blockchain BENJI was deployed on, ranks second with a 9.4% market share. pic.twitter.com/y30gLrPBg4

— Entropy Advisors (@EntropyAdvisors) August 21, 2025

Intraday yield

In June this year Franklin Templeton unveiled patent-pending intraday yield as a new feature of its Benji technology platform. The asset manager said this enables proportional calculation and distribution of yield, down to the second, when a tokenized security is transferred from one party to another.

As a result, if an investor owns a tokenized security for part of the day and then transfers it to another investor, they will still earn interest for part of that day. The blockchain platform also enables yield to be paid out every day, including weekends and holidays. In contrast, in traditional finance interest is typically calculated at the end of a trading day and distributed to investors at the end of each month.

Roger Bayston, head of digital assets at Franklin Templeton, said in a statement: “We believe features that are possible due to the composability of the blockchain environment, like intraday yield, have the potential to become an industry standard, ensuring that investors facilitating transactions of any size can realize the increased benefits and utilities of blockchain operating environments.”

Gokhman said paying intraday yield, down to the second, is important to show the benefits of blockchain technology to the traditional finance world, where a lot of money is left on the table due to the time taken to distribute payments.

4/ Since its inception, BENJI has distributed nearly $50M in dividends to investors.

Most dividends are distributed on Stellar, as it holds the majority of the AUM. The remaining dividends are primarily distributed on EVM chains, including Arbitrum, Ethereum, Base, Polygon, and… pic.twitter.com/pM3NQyElSv

— Entropy Advisors (@EntropyAdvisors) August 21, 2025

9/ In May 2025, BENJI introduced the P2P transfer function. Since then, it has achieved a transfer volume of $87M across 468 transfers.

We have yet to see the full utilization of BENJI's P2P transfer functionality. We believe that as BENJI integrates with more DeFi protocols and… pic.twitter.com/qYqV2CO5lP

— Entropy Advisors (@EntropyAdvisors) August 21, 2025

In addition to intraday yield, the Benji technology platform has added compliant, permissioned wallet-to-wallet token transfers on supported blockchain networks, as well as functionality to allow the purchase or redemption of tokenized securities using stablecoins.

Sandy Kaul, head of innovation at Franklin Templeton, said in a statement: “We’re not here to watch the future happen, we’re here to help shape it. We believe the future will be a blockchain-based system delivered with the trust, scale and regulatory rigor that investors expect.”

Gokhman argued that the Benji technology platform’s intraday yield functionality, fully onchain settlement, the use of multiple blockchains and the ability to tokenize assets is a differentiator for Franklin Templeton. Tokenization will also democratize access for retail investors to asset classes such as private markets.

Tokenization is going to be a complete game changer,” he said. “Giving everyone an equal opportunity to investments is really important.”

In addition, Gokhman believes tokenization will create new asset classes. Franklin Templeton is working on projects that involve royalty streams, fine art and collectible assets for institutional, family office and retail investors.

12/ By using blockchain technology, BENJI becomes more cost effective than its traditional counterparts.

BENJI not only reduces costs associated with transfer agents but also allows creation and redemption through onchain transactions, often costing less than $0.001 on Layer 2s… pic.twitter.com/IrCUYnufxY

— Entropy Advisors (@EntropyAdvisors) August 21, 2025

The Benji platform is available as a white label technology for banks or asset managers to tokenize securities, or via one of several tokenized money market funds launched by Franklin Templeton for a variety of global institutional and retail use cases. In 2024 the first fully tokenized UCITS fund in Luxembourg was launched on the Benji technology platform and the firm has secured regulatory approval to launch the first retail tokenized fund in Singapore this year.

“Rather than just providing excellent investment performance and targeted solutions, we can also provide clients with these additional value adds, and that has been extremely well received,” said Gokhman.