Tokenized T-Bills Reach Record $14B TVL

Tokenized U.S. Treasury bills reached a record $14 billion in total value locked (TVL) in April 2026, driven by Franklin Templeton’s Benji product and fresh inflows on Ethereum, BNB and Solana, according to on-chain analytics data.

Ethereum remained the largest venue for on-chain government debt because of its early role in money market funds and bill tokenization. BNB and Solana recorded notable inflows during the month.

Franklin Templeton’s Benji engine was the fastest-growing issuer over the prior 30 days, with the Benji fund on Ethereum expanding on-chain assets by more than 381%. Other rapid gains included TBILL on Ethereum (about +179%), USDY on Sei Network (+108%), STBT on Ethereum (+62%) and JTRSY on Ethereum (+57%).

Approximately 33,900 wallets held tokenized U.S. Treasuries, a figure near recent peaks. A large share of holders are decentralized finance teams and protocols that use tokenized bills as collateral in lending markets. Protocols such as Morpho, Sky and Flux accept tokenized T-bills as backing for loans and vault positions. Sky Protocol backs its USDS stablecoin with tokenized bills, and Ondo Finance’s USDY is similarly supported.

Usage of tokenized T-bills on-chain has skewed conservative compared with other crypto assets. A Sky sub-DAO called Spark Protocol designates its T-bill positions as anchor collateral to offset market volatility. Increased interest in tokenized Treasuries followed a wave of outflows from lending protocols that accelerated after the KelpDAO exploit, prompting some projects to seek lower-risk assets.

Tokenized Treasuries represent a portion of total U.S. government debt held by crypto entities. At the $14 billion TVL level, the underlying bills carried an annualized yield of about 3.68%, which translates to roughly $515 million in interest for issuers over a year. Tokenization rules differ by protocol, and in many cases it is unclear whether issuers pass those yields through to token holders.

Tether remained the single largest buyer and holder of U.S. government debt overall, though the tokenized bills used in DeFi account for only part of that exposure. The growth in tokenized T-bills occurred while other decentralized finance metrics softened.