Franklin Templeton has announced the expansion of its Benji platform to the Canton Network, an integration that brings its tokenized funds to a permissioned institutional network. This collaboration provides institutional clients access to a regulated ecosystem with configurable privacy, directly affecting managers, custodians and market makers seeking to use tokenized assets as collateral.
The integration connects the Benji Technology Platform —Franklin Templeton’s infrastructure that supports the Franklin OnChain U.S. Government Money Fund (FOBXX) and the BENJI tokens, with more than $730 million in tokenized assets— to Canton Network, a layer 1 public but permissioned chain focused on institutional finance.
Franklin Templeton, which manages more than $1.69 trillion in assets, has been deploying tokenized products on various public chains since 2021. Adding Canton to its list of networks implies a hybrid model that combines public chains and environments with stricter regulatory controls.
Canton, backed by a consortium of institutions and with a $135 million funding round, offers a Global Collateral Network designed to move collateral and liquidity between legacy systems and on-chain. According to the statement, participants such as trading firm QCP plan to leverage the platform as a source of liquidity, suggesting an immediate arrival of institutional buyers and sellers.
“Integrating the Benji Technology Platform into the Canton network demonstrates the strength of our ecosystem and the momentum behind tokenized finance”, said Georg Schneider, Head of RWA at Digital Asset.
Implications for the financial market
The connection to Canton reduces regulatory friction for institutional clients that require privacy and controls, which can accelerate adoption by banks and managers wary of open public networks. It also expands use cases for tokenized funds as collateral in established markets.
For market makers and custodians, the availability of regulated assets on the Global Collateral Network can improve liquidity and capital efficiency. However, it also implies technological and governance dependency on a permissioned network.
Competitively, this strategy positions Franklin Templeton on a hybrid path compared with rivals that prioritize only public chains, offering flexibility to clients with different regulatory and risk profiles.
