Exclusive: WisdomTree Connect expands to Base, Arbitrum, Avalanche and Optimism
WisdomTree’s giving institutions access to their tokenized funds across Arbitrum, Base, Avalanche, Ethereum and Optimism with its WisdomTree Connect, the team exclusively told Blockworks.
“Historically, WisdomTree Connect was only on Ethereum, and we think it’s really important for availability” to allow users to get access to other EVM chains, especially given that WisdomTree prides itself in being “chain agnostic.” Its more retail-focused Prime app, for example, is built on Stellar, WisdomTree’s Maredith Hannon told me.
It also means that its clientele can use the various chains without ever leaving their own ecosystem.
The team had a “lot of interest” from institutional clients for tokenized funds, which led to it launching 13 tokenized funds on its institutional RWA platform.
“We, on purpose, built a suite that really allows any investor to build a diversified portfolio onchain. A lot of the input that we’ve received from the market is, ‘There’s plenty of money market funds. What else do you have?’”
The suite includes equity index funds, fixed income funds, asset allocation funds and, of course, WisdomTree’s signature money market fund, WTGXX.
Hannon added that their institutional clients have been looking for alternatives as yields come down. Specifically, investors have been aiming for higher-yield option alternatives to fixed-income products.
“This just gives them more optionality and more availability, where they can build out a diversified portfolio that they would do in the traditional world for asset management, in a way that’s still onchain and still also being able to be held native in their own wallets,” Hannon explained.
The Connect platform itself is what Hannon called “tech first,” allowing the clients to own the wallet infrastructure. Instead of a whitelist, they use soulbound NFTs that “essentially tag the wallets as WisdomTree wallets,” allowing peer-to-peer transfers between flagged Connect wallets.
“This is really the starting point for us to be able to say clients [can] […] create a network of networks. So let’s say that [a] […] financial institution developed its own type of identity solution. We could start to create a network of networks of identity to bring more and more investors onchain organically,” Hannon said.
Outside of the newest rollout, the team has been busy applying its Government Money Market Digital Fund as a reserve asset for Frax USD. They also applied for an investment from Arbitrum’s RWA ecosystem.
The market cap of WisdomTree’s WTGXX sits at $108 million, according to rwa.xyz. That puts it below the offerings from both Franklin and BlackRock.