The National Stock Exchange announced the upcoming launch of an automated trade clearing and settlement platform based on blockchain technology. The DLT-based Digital Exchange Subregister System (DESS) was approved by the Australian Council of Financial Regulators at its October meeting.
The NSX is working with the Australian Securities and Investment Commission on finalizing the process and the date it can go live on the Australian Securities exchange.
DESS is already “technically and operationally ready for service to commence data accumulation and writing to the blockchain,” the company said. The previous reports also said that DESS is a joint venture between NSX and financial services firm iSignthis.
John Karantzis, CEO of iSignthis and NSX, previously accused the ASX of blocking the venture access to its clearing services. Also, the stock exchange suspended trading of iSignThis shares in October 2019.
ASX said the suspension was in order to hold a review after a market research group raised issues related to iSignthis’ governance, disclosures, and shareholder structure. ASX has been building a DLT-based clearing house system to replace its aging CHESS system from 2017.
In a recent announcement, ASIC and the Reserve Bank of Australia asked ASX to keep up the development process without further delays. The National Stock of Exchange said that the Nasdaq trading engine will initially be written to both CHESS and DESS systems.
As revealed in February, the company ClearPay is seeking the help of distributed ledger technology to facilitate same-day settlements and update the accounting between trading participants, the exchange, and the share registry.
