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Asset management firm Franklin Templeton announced its support for the CLARITY Act on July 27. Franklin Resources had previously disclosed that as of June 30, its assets under management totaled $1.79 trillion, up from $1.78 trillion a month earlier. Franklin Templeton stated that the CLARITY Act would establish clearer rules for digital assets, help investors understand the protections available, and increase corporate certainty regarding the division of federal regulatory responsibilities. BlackRock, Fidelity Investments, Goldman Sachs, and Charles Schwab have previously publicly supported this market structure bill. Senate Republicans released an updated version on July 22, proposing to divide the regulatory oversight of digital assets between the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).
: Sandy Kaul, Head of Digital Assets and Innovation at investment management firm Franklin Templeton, stated that the AI agent economy will increase demand for blockchain protocols to facilitate machine-to-machine micropayments. Traditional bank card networks are unsuitable for agent-based payments due to fees and settlement times. Sandy Kaul pointed out that blockchain networks like Aptos, Solana, and BNB Chain are more suitable for the agent economy, with transactions settling in seconds, faster than the 1 to 3 business day settlement time of the Visa network. In a joint report, payment company Visa and investment validation platform Artemis stated that traditional bank cards designed for low-frequency human commercial activities are insufficient to support AI agents, which require near-zero fees and faster settlement. Since its launch in May 2025, the x402 payment protocol developed by Coinbase has seen an adjusted transaction volume of $15 million and over 109 million adjusted transactions.
on July 1, 2026, STBL launched the institution-grade stablecoin USST on the Stellar network. This stablecoin is backed by real-world assets, with the initial minting collateral being the tokenized Treasury bill USDY. USST is built on STBL's Stablecoin 2.0 infrastructure, allowing market participants to deposit eligible real-world assets, such as tokenized Treasury bills or money market funds, to mint USST. It supports settlement, collateral liquidity, and cross-border payments. STBL plans to add Franklin Templeton's BENJI as a second collateral option but has not yet set a date for the BENJI collateral integration, nor has it disclosed the initial minting size of USST on Stellar.
Odaily reports: Blockchain data infrastructure startup Cambrian has secured $6 million in seed funding, co-led by Franklin Templeton and Polychain Capital, with participation from Flow Traders, Selini Capital, Paper Ventures, Nomad Capital, and others.As previously reported by Odaily, Cambrian also received a $5.9 million pre-seed investment led by the a16z Crypto Startup Accelerator, bringing its total funding to $11.9 million.Founded in 2024, Cambrian currently offers APIs for institutions and AI agents, providing real-time and historical on-chain data covering yield, risk, lending rates, trading activity, liquidity positions, and market sentiment, helping users allocate capital on-chain. The company plans to expand its existing APIs into a verifiable blockchain data oracle network, serving institutional financial clients, AI agent builders, and protocols that require reliable data to control capital flows. Unlike traditional oracles that primarily provide price data, Cambrian aims to aggregate data from lending protocols, DEX liquidity, social sentiment, developer activity, and historical market data.According to Cambrian, its platform has processed millions of API calls, currently indexes approximately $4.5 billion in TVL across four major lending protocols, tracks 1,789 vaults managed by 895 curators, and monitors over 320,000 DEX liquidity pools on Base and Solana. The company also plans to expand trading data support by integrating Hyperliquid and richer perpetual contract data.
The tokenized version of Franklin Templeton’s Franklin U.S. Equity Index ETF (USPX), issued by xStocks as USPXx, has launched on Fluxion, Mantle’s decentralized exchange (DEX). Mantle stated that Fluxion is among the first on-chain trading platforms to distribute this ETF, enabling users to execute AMM-free, zero-slippage trades via Atomic RFQ.
Financial services firm Morgan Stanley on Thursday filed amended S-1 documents with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, updating its Ethereum and Solana ETF applications and proposing a 0.14% fee for both products. Currently, the lowest fee among spot Ethereum ETFs in the U.S. is the Grayscale Ethereum Staking Mini ETF at 0.15%; among spot Solana ETFs, the Franklin Solana ETF charges 0.19%. Morgan Stanley's latest filings also indicate that Figment, Galaxy Blockchain Infrastructure, and Coinbase Canada will provide staking services for both ETFs, with each fund charging a 5% staking fee on rewards generated by the products. The Morgan Stanley Ethereum Trust is proposed to trade under the ticker MSSE, while the Morgan Stanley Solana Trust is proposed to use the ticker MSOL. (Cointelegraph)
Avalanche announced the launch of the Avalanche Payments Collective, with 28 organizations already joining the coalition to build payment infrastructure on the Avalanche network. The coalition aims to integrate multiple domains, including settlement, stablecoins, capital infrastructure, foreign exchange, asset management, compliance, and global payments. Members include Franklin Templeton, VanEck, WisdomTree, Paxos, Kraken, Anchorage Digital, Ethena, and the Wyoming Stablecoin Committee.
: VanEck's tokenized U.S. Treasury fund, VBILL, has officially launched on the DeFi lending protocol Euler. The fund is issued and tokenized by Securitize. Investors can now use tokenized Treasury bonds as collateral for on-chain lending and liquidity operations, while meeting compliance restrictions.This move reflects that DeFi protocols are accelerating their transition towards institutionalization and compliance to attract traditional financial capital into the on-chain market. Data shows that the market size of tokenized U.S. Treasury bonds has surpassed $15 billion, growing approximately 150% over the past year. Traditional asset management giants such as BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, and Janus Henderson have all launched on-chain treasury or money market products.Euler has previously integrated Securitize's DS Protocol to support the inclusion of tokenized securities with investor qualification restrictions and transfer rules into its lending market. DeFi protocols like Aave are also expanding into institutional-grade RWA businesses.Institutions estimate that the market size for asset tokenization could reach $18.9 trillion by 2033. A Securitize executive stated that as traditional financial institutions enter the crypto space, DeFi protocols must find a balance between openness and compliance requirements. (CoinDesk)
MoonPay has announced the launch of a new platform, MoonPay Trade, designed for banks, fintech companies, and enterprise clients. It provides unified access to tokenized assets, decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols, and stablecoin liquidity across over 200 blockchain networks.The platform is powered by Decent.xyz, a cross-chain routing infrastructure company recently acquired by MoonPay for a reported "high eight-figure USD amount." MoonPay stated that this product will serve as the core execution layer for its institutional business, MoonPay Institutional, which is led by former Acting Chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), Caroline Pham.MoonPay Trade will support subscriptions for tokenized funds, collateral transfers, and integrations with DeFi protocols such as Aave, Morpho, and Maple Finance, enabling institutions to conduct lending and yield generation operations directly on-chain.Industry data shows that the current scale of tokenized real-world assets (RWA) has exceeded $33 billion, growing threefold within a year. Traditional financial institutions, including BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, and JPMorgan, have successively launched tokenized fund products, accelerating the influx of institutional capital into on-chain finance.MoonPay stated that as institutions continue to advance their tokenized asset strategies, its goal is to provide traditional financial institutions with the infrastructure capabilities for compliant access to on-chain markets through a unified interface. (CoinDesk)
According to CoinDesk, crypto infrastructure firm Zerohash is seeking new funding at a valuation exceeding $1.5 billion. This comes after Mastercard abandoned its investment plans for Zerohash following its $1.8 billion acquisition of UK-based stablecoin infrastructure company BVNK. Founded in 2017, Zerohash provides APIs and embedded development tools to financial institutions and fintech companies, enabling support for cryptocurrencies, stablecoins, and tokenized products. The company now serves over 5 million users across 190 countries, with clients including Morgan Stanley, Stripe, Interactive Brokers, BlackRock’s BUIDL Fund, and Franklin Templeton. In September 2025, Zerohash closed its $104 million Series D-2 round, valuing the company at $1 billion at that time.
: tZERO, a regulated securities trading platform, has announced the integration of its tokenization issuance platform with the Aptos network, enabling issuers to directly issue Real World Asset (RWA) tokens on this high-performance public chain, further broadening the path for institutional-grade assets to be placed on-chain.Aptos is being positioned as the underlying network for institutional-grade tokenization infrastructure and is consistently attracting integration by traditional finance and compliant tokenization platforms. Currently, tokenized funds from institutions including BlackRock and Franklin Templeton are already operating on the chain. With tZERO's integration, the compliant asset issuance and trading infrastructure on Aptos is further enhanced, covering the full-chain capabilities from issuance, circulation, to settlement.
The Aptos Foundation and Aptos Labs announced an investment of over $50 million to support first-party products, research, protocol infrastructure, and a strategic fund for trading and AI partners. Aptos stated that Decibel has launched on the Aptos mainnet, with cumulative trading volume exceeding $1 billion. The stablecoin market cap on the Aptos network stands at $1.93 billion, and real-world asset (RWA) tokenization totals $1.2 billion, with asset management firms including BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, and Apollo Global already deployed on the network. Upcoming initiatives include encrypted mempools, FIX and CCXT connectivity, multi-leader consensus, and confidential perpetuals.
According to Cointelegraph, Stable Sea, an enterprise treasury management platform, has integrated WisdomTree’s tokenized U.S. Treasury money market fund WTGXX onto its platform, enabling corporate clients to allocate idle funds into the fund to generate returns. As of April 28, WTGXX’s total assets under management stood at $857.6 million, with a daily yield of 3.43%. WTGXX primarily invests in short-term U.S. Treasury securities; its shares are recorded on-chain, supporting faster settlement and automated trading. Stable Sea’s core functionality automatically sweeps corporate cash balances into yield-bearing instruments—and this integration extends that capability to tokenized funds. Clients remain subject to standard compliance review processes. Tokenized money market funds are now accelerating institutional adoption. WisdomTree has received SEC approval for 24/7 trading of WTGXX; Franklin Templeton is collaborating with Binance to promote tokenized fund shares as over-the-counter (OTC) collateral; and Standard Chartered has launched a framework enabling BlackRock’s tokenized Treasury fund to serve as collateral for trading on OKX.