Animoca Brands & Franklin Templeton expand tokenised assets

Animoca Brands and Franklin Templeton have agreed on a strategic collaboration to bring tokenised real-world assets to the NUVA marketplace.

The deal broadens the range of assets available through the platform backed by Animoca Brands.

Under the collaboration, tokenised real-world assets will be added to NUVA, a vault marketplace co-incubated by Animoca Brands and Nuva Labs. NUVA launched with access to assets based on the Provenance Blockchain, and the new arrangement is intended to expand that offering to assets from a wider group of issuers.

At the centre of the move is an effort to connect more conventional investment products with blockchain-based distribution. Franklin Templeton has been active in digital asset products and tokenisation, while Animoca Brands has built much of its business around digital assets and related infrastructure.

NUVA's existing model has focused on vaults that provide access to assets on the Provenance Blockchain. The companies said that the network held more than USD $30 billion in total value locked as of late September, indicating the scale of assets already associated with the ecosystem from which NUVA emerged.

The collaboration also marks another attempt to draw institutional investors into tokenised markets through structures designed to resemble familiar investment access points. Rather than limiting the marketplace to one blockchain-linked asset base, the plan is to make room for a broader set of tokenised products distributed through NUVA.

Institutional push

The announcement comes as large asset managers and digital asset groups continue to test whether tokenisation can move from niche use cases into mainstream institutional workflows. Broadly, tokenisation refers to representing ownership rights in assets on blockchain-based systems, which advocates say can improve transfer, administration and access.

Institutional adoption has remained uneven, however, with many projects still concentrated in pilot programmes, limited distribution channels or isolated blockchain networks. By linking Franklin Templeton's tokenised asset work with NUVA's marketplace structure, the companies are presenting the collaboration as a route to a wider pool of institutional users.

Yat Siu, Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of Animoca Brands, set out that view in comments released alongside the deal. "The convergence of traditional finance and digital assets has gone from the theoretical to being a real infrastructure play. Franklin Templeton is a pioneer in tokenizing traditional financial assets, and this partnership allows us to integrate institutional-grade RWAs directly into NUVA's vault architecture," said Yat Siu, Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of Animoca Brands. "By combining battle-tested asset management with decentralized distribution, Nuva is expanding how institutional investors access RWAs."

Franklin Templeton is one of the larger traditional investment groups to pursue digital asset initiatives over an extended period. The firm said it has spent a decade working on blockchain-enabled investment solutions in institutional settings, and it is pairing that work with a new joint research effort with Animoca Brands.

Research series

The two groups have launched a four-part co-authored research series focused on tokenisation and real-world assets. It examines the strategic relevance of tokenisation for institutional investors, the market developments that have supported the current phase of adoption, and the effect of tokenisation on portfolio construction and asset evaluation.

That research element adds policy and market context to what is otherwise a product distribution agreement. It also suggests both companies are trying to shape how institutional investors think about tokenised assets, not just how they access them.

Sandy Kaul, Head of Digital Assets and Innovation at Franklin Templeton, described the market as moving into a new stage.

"Tokenization is moving beyond simply putting traditional assets on blockchain rails. The next phase is about expanding how those assets can be accessed, utilized and integrated into increasingly digital investment ecosystems," said Sandy Kaul, Head of Digital Assets and Innovation at Franklin Templeton. "Our collaboration with Animoca Brands and NUVA reflects that evolution, combining Franklin Templeton's investment expertise and experience building blockchain-enabled solutions with new channels for delivering those capabilities to investors."

Broader plans

Beyond the initial work on financial assets, the companies said they are exploring other areas of collaboration, including the co-design and tokenisation of real-world cultural assets. Few details were provided on what those assets might include or how they would be structured, but the reference points to an effort to apply tokenisation beyond mainstream financial instruments.

For Animoca Brands, the link to cultural assets fits a broader strategy that has included digital ownership, blockchain-based consumer platforms and investments across the Web3 sector. The company said it has a portfolio of more than 600 companies and digital assets.

Franklin Templeton brings far greater scale in conventional asset management. The California-based investment manager said it had USD $1.83 trillion in assets under management at the end of August, supported by more than 1,500 investment professionals across public and private markets.

The collaboration brings together a large traditional investment house and a digital asset-focused group at a time when both sides of the market are trying to define how tokenised products could fit within established institutional portfolios and distribution models. Provenance Blockchain's more than USD $30 billion in real-world assets total value locked provides the base on which NUVA has been built.