BlackRock expands BUIDL to Solana as AUM surges past $1.7 billion

Asset manager BlackRock has expanded its BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL) to Solana, its seventh blockchain network, according to a statement issued Tuesday.

The move comes as BUIDL’s assets under management (AUM) surpassed $1.7 billion, fueled by $700 million in inflows over just 11 days, according to DeFiLlama data. Initially crossing the $1 billion mark on March 13, the fund is also tradable on Ethereum, Aptos, Arbitrum, Avalanche, Optimism and Polygon.

Investors traditionally turn to money markets to earn returns on idle cash through short-term, yield-bearing instruments like U.S. Treasurys. However, these funds are restricted to tradfi trading hours and face slow settlement times. Tokenized products — real-world assets (RWAs) represented on decentralized networks such as BUIDL — eliminate these constraints, offering continuous 24/7 access.

Carlos Domingo, co-founder and CEO of Securitize, which handles the back-end of the BUIDL product, said the firm saw massive demand for tokenized RWAs since BUIDL’s launch in March 2024. Domingo said in the press statement that adding Solana to the list of access points “is a natural next step” as the $5 billion tokenized market continues its growth.

“Solana is uniquely positioned to drive the next wave of adoption for tokenized real-world assets due to the network’s speed, low costs, and active developer ecosystem,” Lily Liu, President of the Solana Foundation, added in the Tuesday statement.

While BlackRock’s BUIDL is currently the tokenized money market leader, other asset managers have also grabbed a piece of the pie. Franklin Templeton’s OnChain U.S. Government Money Fund, or FOBXX, was launched in April 2021 and has over $671 million in AUM. FOBXX is also available on eight blockchain platforms: Stellar, Polygon, Avalanche, Aptos, Arbitrum, Base, Ethereum, and, most recently,  Solana .