Franklin Resources, otherwise known as Franklin Templeton – which provides investment advisory services to mutual fund, retirement, and institutional investors – is being accused of sabotaging a blockchain startup to help it enter the fintech market.

Why should we care?
A group of investors in blockchain startup Onsa called Blockchain Innovation LLC filed a lawsuit against Franklin Templeton, accusing the company of launching technology it took from Onsa. The objective, according to the Onsa investors, was to “change [Franklin Templeton’s] image as a technological dinosaur and to generate enormous financial benefits that flow from Onsa’s innovative technology,” Onsa creators say it developed a tokenized money market that converts assets into digital tokens, the first offering of its type to be approved by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The investors claim that after gaining control of Onsa by way of an investment, Franklin Templeton cut loose some of Onsa’s coders and executives, only to bring them into Franklin Templeton to help it to build its own version of the technology. The startup’s shareholders are seeking damages “likely in the billions of dollars.” Franklin Templeton, however, claims the lawsuit is “misguided,” and suggested that Blockchain Innovation LLC was created “solely to manufacture litigation against Franklin Templeton.”