Wall Street Goes On-Chain: Ondo and Franklin Templeton Disrupt Industry Dynamics

Author: Paul Veradittakit, Managing Partner at Pantera Capital; Compilation: Shaw Golden Finance

Summary

• Franklin Templeton and Ondo Finance have tokenized five ETF tokens , covering US stocks, fixed income, and gold categories. Users can trade 24/7 with no need for a broker account—just a crypto wallet. This partnership is the most significant institutional endorsement to date of the on-chain securities distribution model.

• Ondo Global Markets currently accounts for about 70% of the tokenized stocks market . Since going live in September 2025, total value locked (TVL) has exceeded $700 million, and cumulative trading volume has reached $13 billion. Franklin Templeton manages $1.7 trillion in assets, while Ondo provides the underlying trading rails.

• This is the purest form of Crypto as a Service (CaaS) so far . Users only need to invest in the most popular global assets. Running on-chain is merely the underlying infrastructure—not the core label of the product itself.

For years, the idea of tokenizing real-world assets (RWA) has been simple and straightforward in theory, yet difficult to execute in practice: put traditional financial products on-chain to unlock around-the-clock liquidity and extend access to global investors who can’t use US brokerage infrastructure. The idea itself is correct—execution has simply lagged.

Now, the situation is changing.

With 79 years of history and more than $1.7 trillion in assets under management, Franklin Templeton has announced a partnership with Ondo Finance to tokenize five of its ETFs. These are issued directly on-chain via Ondo Global Markets, allowing investors to trade on decentralized exchanges, centralized exchanges, and crypto wallets. No broker account is required, there are no trading-hours restrictions, and there is no longer any intermediary obstruction between investors and the tokenized assets.

This is not a proof of concept, but a new model that many other asset managers are destined to emulate.

Ondo and Franklin Templeton’s joint rollout

Under the cooperation agreement, Ondo will purchase ETF shares from Franklin Templeton and issue tokens through a special purpose vehicle (SPV). Investors hold entitlement to the收益 (economic rights), not underlying security shares—making these tokens directly usable as collateral or integrated into decentralized finance (DeFi) applications. Franklin Templeton handles fund management, while Ondo provides the trading venue.

The five on-chain ETFs currently live are:

1. Franklin Focused Growth ETF (FFOG) : An actively managed US equity fund focused on innovation-driven, growth-oriented companies

2. Franklin US Large Cap Multi-Factor Index ETF (FLQL) : Uses a multi-factor strategy with systematic allocations to US large-cap stocks

3. Franklin Responsible Source Gold ETF (FGDL) : Invests in physical gold sourced through responsible supply-chain procurement

4. Franklin High Yield Corporate Bond ETF (FLHY) : Invests in US high-yield corporate bonds

5. Franklin Income Equity Focus ETF (INCE) : An equity strategy product focused on income-oriented securities

These products are initially available to Europe, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East, and Latin America. The US market still awaits further regulatory clarification on how third parties will distribute and register funds on-chain. This also indicates that relevant regulatory engagement is actively progressing.

Why this is a milestone for Crypto as a Service—not just another RWA headline

In my previous newsletter, I laid out the key thesis for 2026: the industry is shifting from “crypto as a category” to “Crypto as a Service” (CaaS) . Our goal is no longer to help users see the blockchain—we want them to feel absolutely no need to think about it.

Ondo and Franklin Templeton’s partnership is, in my view, the most weighty institutional validation of this thesis I’ve seen.

Consider what’s actually happening: a retail investor in Singapore or São Paulo needs only to open a crypto wallet to invest in Franklin Templeton’s growth ETFs. They won’t think about tokenization, won’t care about the special purpose vehicle or smart contracts. Their takeaway is simply: Sunday at 2 a.m.—I don’t need a broker account to invest in US stocks. The blockchain is just underlying infrastructure; the user experience is nothing but investing itself.

Franklin Templeton’s Head of Innovation, Sandy Kaul, described this move as a pilot, aimed at exploring “a model that truly resonates with the needs of the next generation of investors.” I had already heard her use the exact same phrasing—in fact, in my February article, “RWA Is a Gold Rush,” I quoted her: moving from an account-based system to a wallet-based system is extremely difficult. Now she is leading this transition herself, which makes the significance even more profound. The next generation of investors isn’t seeking crypto asset exposure—they already have access to such assets. What they want is diversified allocation, yield, and access to assets that are not constrained by geography or brokerage systems in the long run. Tokenization breaks down these barriers.

It also confirms my judgment from “Eight Predictions for 2025”: as the underlying infrastructure for issuing and maintaining tokenized assets matures, RWA will ultimately move beyond core products like Treasuries and money market funds, extending into more complex financial instruments such as stocks, ETFs, and bonds. This infrastructure is already in place, and the builder is Ondo.

The scale of the ecosystem Ondo is building

Long before the tokenized Treasury market surpassed $850 million in size, Pantera was already an early investor in Ondo—we set out the investment logic at the time. In 2021, I led Pantera’s seed investment in Ondo. To this day, Pantera remains Ondo’s largest shareholder. Since Ondo Global Markets launched in September 2025, platform TVL has exceeded $700 million, cumulative trading volume has surpassed $13 billion, and it serves more than 70k holders. As of March 2026, the overall tokenized stocks market is about $950 million—meaning Ondo holds roughly 70% of the market share, exceeding the combined total of all competitors. This is a fantastic proof point for Nathan and the entire Ondo team!

Last year, Franklin Templeton laid out its structural viewpoint in “The On-Chain Big Migration Blockchain Report”: for the first time, tokenization is genuinely expanding the reach of the capital markets to a global level.

This partnership with Franklin Templeton is the strongest validation of that thesis so far. When the first large asset manager to directly support on-chain distribution chooses your infrastructure, the entire market takes notice. Institutions like BlackRock and the New York Stock Exchange are watching closely. This is becoming the default pattern for traditional finance to enter the on-chain world.

Outlook

The most closely watched question right now is when this service will be available to the US market. Franklin Templeton has clearly stated that opening it within the United States depends on further regulatory clarification of the rules—that is a reasonable constraint, and the related work is actively under way. As I wrote in “Crypto Industry Outlook 2026,” once the US SEC’s highly anticipated innovation exemption policy for crypto projects is finalized, the pace of development for tokenized stocks and equity-type assets may accelerate further. That window is approaching.

Looking further into the long term, this move has major structural significance. If tokenized ETFs can be designed to function as on-chain collateral under existing architecture, they will no longer be merely digital replicas of traditional financial products—they will become native financial infrastructure building blocks. A Franklin Templeton tokenized ETF used as collateral within DeFi protocols is fundamentally different in financial attributes from a standard ETF stored in a Schwab account. This composability makes its value far exceed just a channel distribution innovation—it marks the beginning of an entirely new financial system.