Polygon’s Infrastructure Empowers Future of Finance with Asset Tokenization

• Polygon has been at the heart of asset tokenization, with Sygnum Bank tokenizing private and debt markets, while Hamilton Lane and Apex Group have offered DLT-registered shares.
• Bitcoin Suisse has issued a tokenized bond on Polygon, while Franklin Templeton debuted its tokenized money fund backed by US Treasuries in 2022.

The tokenization of real-world assets has emerged as one of blockchain technology’s biggest applications, with trillions of dollars expected to be brought on-chain by 2030. Polygon is at the heart of this revolution, with some of the world’s pioneer tokenization projects being powered by the Ethereum layer 2 network.

21.co, a DeFi investment services firm, estimates that in a bullish scenario, the market size for tokenized assets will hit $9.95 trillion by the end of the decade, while the Boston Consulting Group estimates the figure at $11 trillion.

This has heated the race to dominate the tokenization market in recent years. Every network wants to be at the frontier of this financial revolution. Still, only a few have witnessed significant user interest, and Polygon has been among the leaders, attracting both small-scale users and trillion-dollar giants.

Tokenization on Polygon in Full Steam

As the network recently shared, it has attracted some of the world’s leading companies, which have issued hundreds of millions of dollars in real-world assets on-chain.

the financial world is evolving rapidly with the tokenization of traditional assets.

institutions are increasingly turning to polygon's scalable, secure, and efficient blockchain solutions to revolutionize finance.

here are a few of those innovative projects pic.twitter.com/oTOZ5vfa6M

— Polygon | Aggregated (@0xPolygon) July 3, 2024

One such pioneer is Franklin Templeton, the global asset manager with $1.5 trillion under its management. In November 2022, the firm issued the Franklin OnChain US Government Money Fund (FOBXX) on Polygon. The fund offers a tokenized money market fund backed by US treasuries.

While launching the product, Templeton’s Head of Digital Assets, Roger Bayston, revealed the company had selected Polygon for its “proven track record.”

Last year, yet another global asset manager followed Templeton’s lead and jumped on board. Hamilton Lane, whose assets under management have hit $850 billion, launched its second fund on Polygon, with Securitize offering access through a feeder fund.

In January last year, Hamilton Lane had issued its first fund, which attracted $2.1 billion in investor commitments.

In the same month, Dutch banking conglomerate ABN AMRO issued a €5 million digital green bond using the ERC-3643 standard. The issuance provided a glimpse into Polygon’s capabilities in sustainable finance.

A month after the ABN AMRO issuance, German tech giant Siemens issued a €60 million digital bond on Polygon.

“By moving away from paper and toward public blockchains for issuing securities, we can execute transactions significantly faster and more efficiently than when issuing bonds in the past,” commented Peter Rathgeb, Corporate Treasurer at Siemens AG.

Several other companies within crypto and beyond have issued similar tokenized products, leveraging Polygon’s low fees and fast and secure transactions. They range from Sygnum Bank, Bitcoin Suisse, Ondo Finance, and Bali real estate investment firm Cofund.

Meanwhile, MATIC trades at $0.4627, losing 6.79% over the past day as the broader market bleeds. The overall market cap has dipped by 3.8%, with some tokens like Arbitrum, Optimism, Litecoin, and gaming sensation Notcoin all losing over 10%.