Securitize and Elixir are launching a liquid staking token (LST) for tokenized securities, including BlackRock’s onchain money fund, BUIDL, the cryptocurrency platforms said on Nov. 19.

Designed by Elixir, a blockchain network for crypto exchanges, the deUSD RWA Institutional Program “unlocks enhanced yield-opportunities and composability for more than $1B Real World Assets (RWAs) issued by Securitize across decentralized finance (DeFi),” Securitize said in a press release.

The DeFi vaults, based on the Ethereum network’s ERC-4626 standard, “allows Blackrock BUIDL and other RWA holders to seamlessly access DeFi using deUSD as the primary currency,” Elixir said in a Nov. 19 post on the X platform.

Tokenized by Securitize, BlackRock’s USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL) is a money market fund that invests primarily in short-dated United States Treasury bills (T-Bills) and similar low-risk, interest-bearing securities.

The DeFi vaults issue BUIDL depositors LSTs called sBUIDL, Elixir said.

“BUIDL holders can now mint sBUIDL and use it to access DeFi via deUSD, all while continuing to earn the underlying yield. $1B in RWA liquidity just became unlocked,” RWA.xyz, an RWA database, said in an X post.

Securitize, Elixir launch DeFi vaults for Blackrock’s BUIDL image 0

Source: RWA.xyz

On Nov. 13, BlackRock launched BUIDL on several additional blockchain networks , including Aptos, Arbitrum, Avalanche, Optimism and Polygon.

Related: BlackRock’s BUIDL goes multichain

“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,” Carlos Domingo, Securitize’s CEO, said in a statement.

Demand is surging for tokenized RWAs that offer low-risk yields from T-bills and other money market instruments.

Securitize, Elixir launch DeFi vaults for Blackrock’s BUIDL image 1

Source: RWA.xyz

Tokenized US treasury debt commands approximately $2.4 billion in total value locked as of Nov. 19, according to RWA.xyz.

BUIDL is the largest tokenized treasury fund in terms of assets under management (AUM), followed by the Franklin OnChain US Government Money Fund (FOBXX), with AUM of approximately $540 million and $450 million, respectively.

Launching across multiple chains enables “BUIDL to be used within leading blockchain-based financial products and infrastructure across ecosystems,” BlackRock said.

Tokenized RWAs — from T-bills to artworks — represent a $30 trillion market opportunity globally, Colin Butler, Polygon’s global head of institutional capital,  told Cointelegraph in August .

“Tokenization can potentially improve liquidity in the trading of Treasuries by reducing operational and settlement frictions,” according to the United States Department of the Treasury’s Q4 2024 report .

Magazine: Legal issues surround the FBI’s creation of fake crypto tokens