Franklin Templeton CEO Sees Blockchains Transforming Finance in Five Years

Franklin Templeton CEO Jenny Johnson has expressed her belief that public blockchains are on the verge of transforming into highly efficient coordination machines. These blockchains have the potential to replace parts of the traditional financial infrastructure, thereby unlocking new value for investors. This transformation is expected to be rapid and significant, with the pace of development in the industry anticipated to surpass what has been seen in the past fifty years over the next five years.

One of the key examples cited is Solana, a blockchain that caters to institutional investors. Solana has demonstrated the capability to process nearly 65,000 transactions per second, a figure that is comparable to the Visa network. Another blockchain, Sui, boasts an even higher transaction processing speed, nearly double that of Solana. With upcoming upgrades, public blockchains are expected to scale their throughput to hundreds of thousands or even millions of transactions per second, further enhancing their efficiency and reliability.

Decentralized exchanges, such as Uniswap, are also playing a crucial role in this transformation. These exchanges facilitate peer-to-peer market making without the need for custody, and they are rapidly catching up to their centralized counterparts in traditional exchanges. They process trillions of dollars in transactions annually, and as these systems improve in speed, their validation and security features have also significantly advanced. This enables them to better fend off hacks and verify identities and asset ownership, making them a more secure and reliable option for investors.

The transformation brought by digital asset technology is not expected to be slow or incremental. Over the next five years, the pace of development across the industry is expected to exceed what has been seen in the past fifty years. This rapid development is driven by the increasing efficiency and reliability of public blockchains, as well as the advancements in decentralized exchanges. As these technologies continue to evolve, they are expected to unlock new value for investors and transform the traditional financial infrastructure.