ASX has signed an memorandum of understanding with its partner DA and VMware to develop digital ledger technology replacing ASX’s Clearing House Electronic Subregister System
Australian Securities Exchange entrance (Credit: Jason7825.Wikipedia.org)
The Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) has signed a three-party memorandum of understanding with Digital Asset (DA) and VMware to develop a digital ledger technology-based solution in Australia and New Zealand.
Under the memorandum of understanding (MOU), ASX aims to provide its digital ledger technology (DLT) solution with support from DA and VMware.
The support will include development of an application to replace ASX’s Clearing House Electronic Subregister System (CHESS) and support DAML, an open source smart contract programming language used to build distributed applications.
It will support distributed ledger and associated infrastructure, delivering its data privacy, confidentiality and security requirements at a larger scale.
ASX deputy CEO Peter Hiom said: “This new partnership is a very positive development that will help us support a wider range of DLT solutions developed by the industry. It confirms our belief in the potential of DLT as we remain on track to deliver the CHESS replacement system in March-April 2021.”
DA is a developer of DLT and has created DAML and ASX’s CHESS replacement technologies, while VMware is a server virtualisation and cloud computing software provider, offering virtualisation and infrastructure solutions to ASX.
Initially, ASX will remain focused on replacing CHESS and ASX aims to take the advantage of the partnership to strengthen its ability to support the financial services industry with the infrastructure to create new services beyond clearing and settlement.
The new DLT solution will support ASX customers in Australia and New Zealand
The partnership will enable the three organisations to work on providing and supporting DLT solutions to customers across Australia and New Zealand. With the MOU now in place, ASX, DA and VMware are working on legal documentation.
Digital Asset co-founder and CEO Yuval Rooz said: “We continue to achieve our milestones to deliver a production-grade, scalable distributed ledger solution for CHESS. VMware is now part of the mission we share with ASX to deliver a DAML-based distributed infrastructure to realise the full potential of this technology.”
The Australian stock exchange said that the software for the new system to replace CHESS is being deployed within its Customer Development Environment, where customers and their service providers have started exploring the clearing and settlement functionality of the new system.
VMware senior vice president and chief research officer David Tennenhouse said: “Providing a state-of-the-art DLT-based system will create new business opportunities for the industry.
“We’re working closely with DA and ASX on a combined offering to provide the enterprise-grade foundation for ASX, and we look forward to expanding our relationship.”