Hassan Maishera
TL;DR
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Blackrock has expanded its BUIDL fund to five new blockchains: Aptos, Arbitrum, Avalanche, Optimism's OP Mainnet, and Polygon networks.
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The BUIDL fund was previously available only on the Ethereum blockchain.
BUIDL Launches on Five New Blockchain
BlackRock, the world's largest asset-management company, announced on Wednesday that its tokenized real-world asset fund to five more blockchains. This latest development means the fund is now available to investors beyond the Ethereum network.
The BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL) is currently the largest money-market fund token and is issued in partnership with the tokenization platform Securitize.
The fund is now available on the Aptos, Arbitrum, Avalanche, Optimism's OP Mainnet, and Polygon networks.
In its press release, Securitize stated that,
“This initiative represents the next step in the evolution of the tokenization market, by enabling BUIDL to be used within leading blockchain-based financial products and infrastructure across ecosystems. Each new blockchain enables the ecosystem of applications and users to natively interact with BUIDL, which can achieve on-chain yield with flexible custody, near real-time 24/7/365 peer-to-peer transfers, and on-chain dividend accrual and distribution.”
The tokenization of real-world assets (RWAs) is gaining widespread adoption as it is the intersection of crypto and traditional finance. In recent months, leading digital asset firms and financial institutions have been racing to launch traditional financial assets like government bonds, private credit, and funds on blockchain networks.
Securitize CEO and co-founder Carlos Domingo added that,
"We wanted to develop an ecosystem that was thoughtfully designed to be digital and take advantage of the advantages of tokenization. With these new chains we'll start to see more investors looking to leverage the underlying technology to increase efficiencies on all the things that until now have been hard to do."
The BUIDL fund went live in March. The token is backed by short-term U.S. government bonds, and its price is anchored to $1.
According to Securitize, BUIDL's management fee on Ethereum, Arbitrum, and Optimism is 50 basis points. The fee is cheaper (20 basis points) on Aptos, Avalanche, and Polygon.
The expansion was possible because ecosystem development organizations Aptos Foundation, Avalanche (BVI), Inc., and Polygon Labs BD Investments (Cayman) Ltd. each agreed to pay BlackRock a quarterly fee.
