BlackRock’s first tokenized product, which launched on Ethereum in March, is now accessible on the Aptos, Arbitrum, Avalanche, Optimism’s OP Mainnet, and Polygon networks.
BUIDL, the largest blockchain-based money market fund, is backed by short-term U.S. Treasury bonds and has $520 million in assets.
BlackRock, the world’s largest asset management company, said it is bringing its tokenized real-world asset fund to five more blockchains, expanding beyond Ethereum and expanding access to the largest money market fund token.
The BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL), issued in partnership with tokenization platform Securitize, is now accessible on the Aptos, Arbitrum, Avalanche, Optimism’s OP Mainnet and Polygon networks, the company said on Wednesday.
Tokenization of real-world assets is one of the hottest trends at the intersection of crypto and traditional finance. Digital asset companies and global financial heavyweights are rushing to put instruments such as government bonds, private credits and funds on blockchain rails, with the aim of achieving faster settlements and operational efficiencies.
“We wanted to develop an ecosystem that was carefully designed to be digital and take advantage of the benefits of tokenization,” Securitize CEO and co-founder Carlos Domingo said in a statement. “With these new chains, we will see more and more investors looking to leverage the underlying technology to drive efficiencies in all the things that have been difficult to do until now.”
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BlackRock introduced its first tokenized product in March. The BUIDL token is backed by short-term US Treasury bonds and its price is anchored at $1. Institutions and protocol treasuries use the product to park their on-chain cash to earn returns or as collateral for trading, while other decentralized finance protocols like Ondo Finance build their products on top of it. BUIDL has attracted more than $520 million in deposits, becoming the largest product in the $2.3 billion tokenized US Treasury market, data from rwa.xyz shows.
BUIDL’s management fee on Ethereum, Aptos and Arbitrum is 50 basis points. It’s cheaper – just 20 basis points – on Aptos, Avalanche and Polygon. Ecosystem Development Organizations Aptos Foundation, Avalanche (BVI), Inc. and Polygon Labs BD Investments (Cayman) Ltd. each agreed to pay BlackRock a quarterly fee.
