The Era of Digital Wallets and Tokenized Assets Is Here, says Jenny Johnson

Key Takeaways:

Blockchain Breakthrough: Public networks, such as Solana and Sui, now rival traditional systems in speed and scale.
Institutional Shift: DeFi advances are attracting major financial players.
Real-Time Finance: Blockchain could unify markets and enable instant settlements.
Global Attention: Governments are quietly adopting blockchain for core infrastructure.

Franklin Templeton’s chief executive, Jenny Johnson, said in an opinion piece published in Fortune that the technology underpinning cryptocurrencies – Blockchain- is finally ready to deliver on its long-awaited promise of transforming traditional finance, emphasizing that the shift toward digital assets will be faster than expected.

Early Blockchain Efforts Struggled to Deliver

Reflecting on the early stages of blockchain adoption, Johnson said that banks and asset managers explored private, permissioned blockchains in hopes of speeding up settlements and reducing reliance on intermediaries. However, she noted, those early efforts ultimately fell short: “We discovered the hard way there was more hype than substance, and that the tech was incapable of delivering at an institutional-grade level.”

Public Blockchains Are Finally Ready for the Big Leagues

According to Johnson, that landscape has changed significantly over the past two to three years, driven by the emergence of more capable public networks. She pointed to Solana and Sui, which have “evolved into hyper-efficient coordination machines.”

Solana now consistently handles around 65,000 transactions per second, “on par with Visa’s global network,” she says. Similarly, Sui can achieve peaks near 297,000 TP.

“Both networks are preparing for upgrades that could elevate their capacity to hundreds of thousands—or even millions—of transactions per second,” She added.

These performance improvements are drawing serious interest from institutional investors, according to Johnson, particularly as decentralized exchanges, like Uniswap, now facilitate trillions of dollars in annual trading volume without a central custodian, enabled by advances in zero-knowledge proofs and on-chain identity verification.

Blockchain Could Unify Global Markets

Discussing the broader impact of blockchain on market infrastructure, Johnson highlighted a major challenge facing global finance: traditional markets remain segmented by geography and trading hours.

She noted that public blockchains could bring global demand together in real time, cutting settlement times in equities from days to just seconds. Johnson also pointed out that with this kind of infrastructure, dividends and interest could be calculated and paid out throughout the day, making cash flows more accurate and dependable for investors.

A Wallet-Centric Future

Turning to how investment practices could evolve, Johnson said one of the most transformative shifts lies in how portfolios are structured.

Instead of juggling multiple brokerage accounts, investors may eventually manage a wide range of tokenized assets, stocks, bonds, commodities, and real-estate shares, from a single digital wallet. These assets could be transferred instantly or used to generate additional yield through lending or staking.

Challenges and Cautions

Despite her optimism, Johnson is realistic about the challenges ahead. Adopting blockchain, she said, will force traditional financial firms to overhaul how they make money, deal with short-term financial strain, and invest in systems they won’t entirely control.

Johnson warned that companies slow to adapt to blockchain and digital asset infrastructure could end up like once-great brands that couldn’t keep up. “Blockbuster vs. Netflix isn’t just an analogy,” she said. It’s a reminder that newer technologies can advance quickly, leaving traditional players struggling to catch up.

Governments Around the World Are Quietly Making Blockchain Infrastructure a Reality

Governments worldwide are steadily integrating blockchain into public infrastructure, signaling broad institutional alignment with the technology’s potential.

Estonia has led the way for years, securing citizen data, voting systems, and healthcare records through its national blockchain framework.

In China, authorities launched a blockchain-based digital ID system for its 1.4 billion residents, enabling secure online authentication.

Similarly, the California Department of Motor Vehicles now manages over 42 million vehicle titles on-chain to reduce fraud and streamline ownership transfers. Additionally, in the U.S. federal system, lawmakers are advancing blockchain for real-time allocation of public funds

Furthermore, central banks in India and the U.K. are piloting digital currencies to modernize payments and settlements. Meanwhile, cross-border CBDC platforms, such as BIS’s mBridge, are bringing together central banks from China, the UAE, Hong Kong, and Thailand.

This global momentum reflects how blockchain is evolving beyond a financial innovation into a foundational tool for modern governance. From securing identities and public records to streamlining payments and preventing fraud, governments are beginning to treat blockchain not as a speculative experiment, but as practical infrastructure.