Multichain Asset Managers Association: asset management on the blockchain

MAMA states its vision in one sentence: "Investment funds of the future will be entirely set up, operated, audited and regulated using blockchain technology." In that picture, smart contracts take over tasks that transfer agents, fund administrators and custodians perform today, and the association expects lower costs and more transparency from it.

More than 30 organizations are members, from finance, blockchain and academia. They include DeFi protocols such as Aave and Liquity, the blockchain NEAR, the on-chain asset management platform Avantgarde Finance and the Swiss crypto broker Bitcoin Suisse. MAMA's events take place mostly in Switzerland, such as the MAMA Zurich Meetup, the CV Summit in Zurich and the Onchain Leaders Gathering in Geneva, and in Frankfurt at the Forum für Digitale Vermögenswerte. Among past events it hosted or partnered with, MAMA names Paris Blockchain Week, the Crypto Assets Conference in Frankfurt and the Singapore FinTech Festival.

On-chain asset management starts with the share register. A tokenized fund still holds bonds, shares or money market instruments; only the record of who owns the fund units moves onto a ledger. The Financial Stability Board puts it this way for money market funds: "it is the shares of the fund itself that are being tokenised, and not the assets". Large asset managers already run such funds. BlackRock launched its onchain fund BUIDL in March 2024, and the Franklin OnChain U.S. Government Money Fund keeps its official share register on public blockchains through its transfer agent. Franklin Templeton has since brought the model into a Luxembourg UCITS fund for European investors. Tokenized funds explained and Tokenized money market funds list more examples.

MAMA's members go a step further. In DeFi, a vault or a protocol can hold the assets itself, and a crypto asset manager runs the strategy through smart contracts that anyone can inspect on the chain. The answer What is decentralized finance? explains how these protocols work, and DeFi investing covers the risks.

In Germany, the regulation on crypto fund units (KryptoFAV) of June 3, 2022, lets fund managers issue fund units as crypto securities, based on section 95 of the investment code (KAGB). At EU level, UCITS units with assets under management below 500 million euros can be admitted to a DLT market infrastructure under the DLT Pilot Regime, Regulation (EU) 2022/858. In Switzerland, FINMA supervises funds and crypto banks under the DLT Act. Recital 22 of MiCA leaves services provided "in a fully decentralised manner without any intermediary" outside the regulation, and a DeFi protocol with an admin key or a concentrated governance vote may not meet that test. What are tokenized funds? sets out the legal basis in detail.

The Multichain Asset Managers Association is a member organization of more than 30 companies, protocols and research groups that want funds to be set up, run and audited on blockchains. It talks to regulators and organizes meetups and conferences, mostly in Zurich and Geneva.

Examples of tokenized funds are BlackRock's BUIDL, which invests in cash, US Treasury bills and repurchase agreements, and the Franklin OnChain U.S. Government Money Fund. Most tokenized investment funds today are money market funds. Tokenized mutual funds that hold shares or bonds follow the same model. In Luxembourg, Franklin Templeton's UCITS fund brings it under EU fund law.

A tokenized fund keeps its usual fund structure, manager and depositary and only records its units on a ledger. An onchain hedge fund or DeFi vault holds crypto-assets directly in smart contracts and trades them on-chain. The first is regulated fund business; the second falls under MiCA or national law only where an intermediary provides the service.