Franklin Templeton and Ondo Team Up to Break Traditional Limits with Tokenized ETF Round-the-Clock Trading

Franklin Templeton and Ondo Finance, a tokenization company for real-world assets (RWA), announced a strategic partnership on March 26, planning to launch on-chain tokenized versions of five Franklin Templeton ETFs, providing 24/7 trading access to global non-U.S. users through the Ondo Global Markets platform.

Partnership Structure: On-Chain ETF Deployment and Platform Details

The five ETFs to be tokenized by Franklin Templeton include high-yield corporate ETFs, growth-oriented ETFs, and responsible gold procurement ETFs, among others. Ondo Global Markets will handle the tokenization deployment and trading infrastructure. Since its launch in fall 2025, Ondo Global Markets has accumulated over $620 million in total value locked (TVL).

Franklin Templeton’s Chief Innovation Officer Sandy Kaul stated that the core goal of this partnership is to “help investors access diversified investment strategies, enable long-term investments, and integrate traditional investments into their on-chain financial lives,” emphasizing that institutions will continue to cautiously introduce institutional-grade products on-chain.

Both parties also plan to jointly develop educational initiatives to demonstrate how traditional investments can integrate into emerging financial ecosystems. It’s important to note that the tokenized ETFs mentioned above are offered via Ondo Global Markets, and U.S. users currently do not qualify for trading.

Institutional Acceleration: Three Parallel Tracks in the Tokenized ETF Arena

Franklin Templeton has long been active in the tokenization space. In 2021, it launched a tokenized U.S. government money market fund on the Stellar network, expanded to Ethereum in 2024, and subsequently deployed on Polygon, Aptos, Avalanche, Arbitrum, Solana, and Base, gaining multi-chain experience in tokenized assets.

Against this backdrop, three institutional forces are simultaneously advancing their tokenized ETF strategies:

• Franklin Templeton × Ondo Finance: Tokenization of five ETFs, offering 24/7 trading for non-U.S. users, supported by a platform with $620 million in TVL.
• NYSE × Securitize: Collaborating with tokenization experts supported by BlackRock to develop standards for tokenized real-world assets such as stocks, bonds, and ETFs.
• Nasdaq: Approved by the SEC to pilot tokenized versions of certain securities.

These three parallel institutional initiatives are collectively moving from experimental edges toward building systemic infrastructure for on-chain traditional assets.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the core differences between tokenized ETFs and traditional ETFs?

Tokenized ETFs represent ownership of traditional ETFs as blockchain tokens, allowing users to trade 24/7 even when traditional markets are closed, and lowering the entry barrier compared to conventional brokerage accounts. The underlying assets remain physical ETFs managed by Franklin Templeton; the tokens are simply their digital on-chain representations.

What is the current scale and status of the Ondo Global Markets platform?

Since its launch in fall 2025, Ondo Global Markets has accumulated over $620 million in TVL. In September 2025, Ondo Finance also launched access to over 100 tokenized U.S. stock trading portals on Ethereum, laying foundational infrastructure for on-chain traditional assets.

Can U.S. users access Franklin Templeton’s tokenized ETFs?

Under current arrangements, these tokenized ETFs are offered via the Ondo Global Markets platform, which is not open to U.S. users at this time. U.S. investors are not yet eligible to trade, and no specific timeline for opening has been announced.