Plume has launched a tokenized vault backed by Fidelity’s Total Bond ETF. It is a small product, but it marks a shift. Tokenized fixed income is trying to move beyond short-dated government debt into duration and active management.
The vault, called nBND, holds shares of the Fidelity Total Bond ETF (FBND) as its primary reserve asset. Plume says it is the first time allocators can reach a tokenized vault backed by that fund.
What the nBND vault does
The product is formally the Nest Fidelity Total Bond ETF Vault. It runs on Nest, Plume’s real-world-asset vault protocol, and issues a receipt token that represents a claim on the vault’s FBND shares.
FBND is not new. Fidelity launched it in October 2014 and it manages roughly US$28 billion. It is actively managed, holding investment-grade, high-yield and emerging-market debt. It carries a 0.36% expense ratio and yields around 4.88%.
Why tokenized fixed income is a different category
The release leans on the tokenized-treasury market, which it says grew from US$12 billion in April 2026 to US$15 billion by June. Independent trackers put tokenized US Treasuries at roughly US$15 billion to US$16 billion in mid-2026, up from about US$2.4 billion in March 2024.
But tokenized treasuries are short-duration government debt. FBND is an actively managed bond fund with credit and duration exposure. So the vault is not a tokenized-treasury product; it is a tokenized actively managed bond fund — a newer and riskier category.
Plume’s own framing says as much. Its chief executive noted that onchain fixed income “was originally concentrated in short-duration Treasuries and money market equivalents,” and that these are “the starting points, not the destination.”
The scale question
Onchain data shows the nBND token is tiny. Plume’s explorer records a total supply of about 52 tokens across two holders; Etherscan records a maximum supply of about 20,703. Either way, the vault is tiny next to its larger peers.
For context, tokenized-treasury leaders are far larger. BlackRock’s BUIDL sits at roughly US$2.25 billion to US$2.8 billion.
The FBND vault grew out of a Plume–ether.fi partnership formed in June 2026. The two set out to build the Etherfi Liquid RWA vault. It launched with a US$25 million deployment and a US$100 million target. Its holdings include BlackRock’s iShares AAA CLO ETF alongside FBND.
Who Plume is
Plume is a blockchain built for real-world assets that launched its public mainnet in June 2025. It holds SEC transfer-agent registration and says it serves more than half of all non-stablecoin real-world-asset holders.
Its Nest vaults distribute institutional assets from Apollo, WisdomTree and Hamilton Lane. Backers include Apollo Global Management, Galaxy Digital and Brevan Howard. In US congressional testimony, its affiliate cited over 220 tokenization projects and about 260,000 RWA wallets.
It has done similar deals before, including a US$50 million anchor deployment from Grove for Apollo’s diversified credit strategy.
The risks worth weighing
A receipt token adds a layer between the investor and the underlying fund. That introduces smart-contract and platform risk on top of ordinary bond-market risk. Interest-rate moves still affect FBND’s value regardless of what chain the token lives on.
Redemption is another variable. Nest vaults are non-custodial and pass yield through pro rata. Redemption timing varies, though, and can stretch depending on the underlying assets’ liquidity.
What to watch
Three things will show whether this is a category shift or a pilot. Whether the vault scales beyond a rounding error in onchain supply. Whether allocators accept credit and duration risk in a tokenized wrapper, not just T-bill yield. And whether Plume’s regulated rails, including its transfer-agent registration, hold up as the products get more complex.
Tokenization has proved it can wrap the safest asset in finance. The harder test is everything after that.
Editor’s Note
Sources: Plume Network‘s release of 5 October 2026; crypto coverage of the nBND vault; Plume’s and Etherscan’s onchain token data; rwa.xyz and NBER research on the tokenized-treasury market; and Plume’s own product and congressional-testimony disclosures. The “first” claim and the market figures are as stated by Plume, whose vault is the product in question. The onchain supply figures come from public block explorers and carry a date. TechRecast has not independently verified the vault’s terms. This article is not investment advice.