Plume, the Open Finance platform for institutional assets, has announced the launch of its new nBND vault, giving allocators their first access to a tokenized vault backed by the Fidelity Total Bond ETF (FBND) as its primary reserve asset. FBND is Fidelity's actively managed total bond ETF, holding a diversified portfolio of U.S. bonds across government, corporate, and securitized sectors — a broader mandate than the short-duration Treasuries and money market equivalents on which the onchain fixed income market was originally concentrated.

The offering extends onchain fixed income beyond short-term cash-management products and into a diversified bond portfolio, marking a step in the convergence of traditional asset management and onchain infrastructure. In practice, that brings the core building blocks of a traditional bond allocation — duration across maturities, credit exposure, and active management — into a programmable onchain format.

According to the announcement, the maturation of onchain capital markets requires access to a diverse range of assets that are battle-tested and managed by world-class financial institutions. Through the vault, Plume says it is supporting the development of a robust fixed-income market, rather than simply providing another isolated yield opportunity.

“While the onchain fixed income market was originally concentrated in short-duration Treasuries and money market equivalents, these are the starting points, not the destination. Institutional allocators want duration, and active management, the same building blocks they use offchain,” said Chris Yin, CEO and Co-Founder of Plume. Duration — a measure of how sensitive a bond portfolio is to interest rate changes — is a core lever of institutional fixed-income allocation and one largely absent from short-maturity tokenized products.

The launch comes as the tokenized U.S. Treasuries market grew from $12 billion in April 2026 to $15 billion in June, just two months later. That figure remains a small fraction of the global fixed income market, which represents more than $100 trillion in assets. Should this entire market be tokenized — an outcome expected and outlined by respected asset management executives — the growth opportunity is considerable, according to the company. For readers tracking the category, the gap between that $15 billion tokenized footprint and the broader bond market remains the clearest available measure of how early this segment is.

Collaboration between crypto-native and traditional financial institutions is described as essential to nurturing this market, bridging the technical infrastructure of blockchain with the expertise and institutional trust that traditional finance has built over decades. Institutional appetite for proven, yield-bearing assets onchain is apparent, and the vault is intended to ensure this next phase of development continues.

“As tokenized assets and on-chain applications become more integrated into mainstream market infrastructure, a collaborative ecosystem is essential to expanding investment access,” said Cynthia Lo Bessette, Head of Digital Asset Management at Fidelity Investments. “We're excited to collaborate with Plume to bring financial products on-chain, providing a broader set of investors with access to greater programmability to build custom portfolios, alongside investment solutions that unlock new forms of collateral utility and access to capital.”

Source: Global FinTech Series