thedefiant.io
Global investment firm Franklin Templeton is launching a patent-pending intraday yield for its onchain real-world asset fund, BENJI.
BENJI is the ticker assigned to the Franklin Onchain U.S. Government Money Fund, the second-largest tokenized treasury fund in DeFi, with $775 million in assets under management (AUM).
BENJI is currently live on eight different blockchains - Stellar, Arbitrum, Base, Ethereum, Avalanche, Polygon, Aptos, Solana - with $489 million, or 63% of its total AUM, on Stellar Network.
The intraday yield activation enables consistent distribution of yield, “down to the second” when a tokenized security is transferred between parties, according to the release.
With intraday yield enabled, an investor will earn yield regardless of how long they hold the asset for, meaning that an investor can acquire BENJI shares, transfer them to a different party three hours after the original acquisition, and still receive yield earnings from the three hours the shares were held.
The yield will be paid out every calendar day, even on weekends and holidays.
Roger Bayston, the Head of Digital Assets at Franklin Templeton told The Defiant, “it creates a whole new opportunity set for money market funds that previously haven’t been opened to them [BENJI clients].”
Wallet-to-wallet transfers
The activation will also introduce new capabilities in the Benji Technology Platform, that enables permissioned wallet-to-wallet transfers and the ability to purchase or redeem tokenized securities via stablecoins.
Bayston cited several financial practices that can be enhanced by the new yield feature on BENJI, such as collateral management and leverage access, creating “an expanding set of investable assets for clients.”
For clients moving large quantities through BENJI, even short-term yield can be meaningful and may present new opportunities for borrowers and lenders evaluating the risk curve in collateral management.
Also, the addition of wallet-to-wallet transfers and stablecoin redemption could open up new, creative, leverage opportunities thanks to the fund’s blockchain rails, which may allow clients to take new approaches towards risk and return, Bayston said.
According to Bayston, this may not only create more opportunities for existing clients, but attract new ones.
“I think you’re opening up the pool to a whole bunch of different users,” he said. “The money stays active all the time in the marketplace, and these are huge new addressable markets.”