Franklin Templeton Takes Tokenized Assets to Animoca

Key Insights

• Franklin Templeton and Animoca Brands are partnering to expand institutional access to tokenized assets through the NUVA vault marketplace.
• The collaboration will broaden NUVA’s offerings beyond assets on Provenance Blockchain, while a four-part research series examines tokenization’s role in institutional investing.
• The firms are also exploring the co-design and tokenization of cultural assets, with further details expected later this year.

A new distribution channel is emerging for the burgeoning market of tokenized assets. On October 9, 2026, Franklin Templeton and Animoca Brands announced a partnership that would introduce tokenized real-world assets to NUVA, an Animoca-backed vault marketplace.

The deal is designed to provide greater institutional access to blockchain-based investments. New products would extend beyond the existing holdings on the venture in Animoca-backed Provenance Blockchain.

The announcement does not yet identify the first assets that investors would be able to access via the partnership. At this time, the deal is more about expansion of the marketplace and building the infrastructure for institutional products, rather than the introduction of a specific investment offering.

NUVA Goes Beyond Its Original Blockchain Foundation

The NUVA launch was in May 2026, and it was co-incubated by Animoca Brands and Nuva Labs (Provenance Blockchain Labs former name). The vaults there initially provided access to assets on Provenance Blockchain.

That network reported more than $30 billion of value locked on its system as of September 24, 2026, according to the announcement in question. That is a measure of the existing infrastructure within the broader Provenance system, albeit not the assets in the marketplace itself.

The Franklin Templeton deal is meant to allow access beyond the NUVA’s Provenance-based assets. It could also see the introduction of products by more issuers onto the platform, according to the official statement.

Their joint announcement has thus far avoided disclosing the issuers, products, launch schedule, or commercial terms. This distinction is key within the domain of tokenized assets.

Having placed an investment on a blockchain is one thing; getting it out on a distribution channel that can meet institutional needs is another. NUVA has, in its expanded offering, included products it will host and how it will support them in terms of structure for the investors.

Franklin Templeton Brings Scale for Institutional Players

In terms of the institutional marketplaces, Franklin Templeton announced assets under management worth over $1.83 trillion as of August 31, 2026, and more than 1,500 investment professionals.

Yat Siu, Animoca Brands’ co-founder and executive chairman, discussed the new partnership, stating,

“The convergence of traditional finance and digital assets has gone from the theoretical to the infrastructure play.”

In the same vein, the partnership would allow institutional real-world assets to be integrated into NUVA’s vault architecture. Sandy Kaul, Franklin Templeton’s head of digital assets and innovation, sees access as the next challenge for tokenization.

Putting investments on a blockchain is only the starting point. The bigger task is making them easier to access and use across digital investment platforms.

The remarks speak to the central issue for tokenized assets: the question of whether digital infrastructure can serve to make existing investments easier to distribute and use, beyond just the technology of the blockchain underpinning the ownership.

Tokenized Assets Growth Is Across Multiple Marketplaces

Recent market coverage in the previous week suggests that tokenization is growing across a range of categories, not centered on a single asset. In an October 8 story, BlockInsider reported that Circle has overtaken Securitize in the tokenized-stock market, on the value of underlying stocks, of $308 million compared with Securitize's $295 million.

The same report highlighted the value of tokenized stocks on Ondo at $923.8 million, while bStocks had reached $895 million.

On the other hand, a separate report said that RWA Foundation and Token Terminal figures showed that XRP Ledger had boosted about $2.2 billion in tokenized commodity market capitalization through October 6, compared with roughly $1.6 billion on Ethereum.

The report also said that XRP Ledger did not belong to the top 10 networks in terms of commodity holder-address growth.

These numbers come across different sectors and do not highlight a direct link to NUVA. But they do illustrate the need for distinguishing between asset type, distribution and network activity when tracking tokenized assets.