Plume Opens Onchain Door to Fidelity’s $28B Bond Giant

Key Takeaways

• Plume’s nBND opened Oct. 5 with Fidelity’s FBND as its primary reserve asset.
• Fidelity’s roughly $28B FBND remains offchain while nBND wraps exposure to its shares.
• Defillama recorded about $48 in nFBND assets shortly after Plume announced the vault.

A $28 Billion Bond Giant Gets a Blockchain Wrapper

A roughly $28 billion Fidelity bond ETF just acquired a blockchain doorway, but almost none of that mountain of money walked through it. Plume launched nBND on Oct. 5, offering onchain exposure to Fidelity Total Bond ETF (FBND), an actively managed fund spanning government, corporate, mortgage, high-yield, and emerging-market debt.

The wrinkle is considerable. Fidelity hasn’t tokenized FBND, and the fund’s billions remain firmly offchain. Instead, Plume’s Nest protocol wraps exposure to shares held inside a vault and issues investors a receipt token. Hours after the announcement, using the ticker nFBND, Defillama showed roughly $48 in onchain assets.

Plume Wants to Move Beyond Tokenized Treasury Bills

That tiny starting balance doesn’t make the structure trivial. Onchain fixed income has largely revolved around short-duration U.S. Treasuries and money-market-style products. Plume is betting institutional investors eventually want the rest of the bond counter, too.