Kraken's parent company Payward will integrate Franklin Templeton's BENJI tokenized money market fund into its platform as a collateral and cash management tool, allowing clients to earn yields on idle dollars on-chain.
The direct outcome of this collaboration is the integration of Franklin Templeton's BENJI tokenized money market fund into the Kraken platform, serving as a collateral tool and cash management device for institutional clients—enabling professional traders to deposit idle funds into an on-chain dollar tool that generates yields without leaving the Kraken ecosystem.
Launched in 2021 on the Stellar blockchain, BENJI has since expanded to Polygon, Arbitrum, and other networks, making it one of the longest-operating tokenized money market funds in the industry, directly competing with BlackRock's BUIDL, which recently surpassed $2.3 billion in assets under management. By embedding BENJI into Kraken's collateral framework, Franklin Templeton gains a distribution channel that not only reaches institutional trading desks but also taps into the exchange's vast retail customer base, while Kraken acquires a regulated, yield-generating dollar tool as an alternative for idle USDT or USDC balances.
Franklin Crypto, 250 Digital, and the race for on-chain distribution.