Ava Labs president says NYSE spent a year testing Avalanche technology for tokenization plans

Ava Labs President Charley Cooper said the New York Stock Exchange has spent the past year testing Avalanche (AVAX) technology and working with the blockchain company on how it could fit into the exchange's systems.

Cooper told The Block's Gareth Jenkinson during an interview at Avalanche Summit in New York on Thursday that NYSE had pressed Ava Labs on the project's economics as well as its technology, seeking to establish whether the company understood the exchange's wider business needs.

Cooper said the two sides had developed a "close working relationship," but stopped short of saying the exchange had chosen Avalanche. "I leave it to the NYSE guys to talk publicly about where they are in the whole process," he said.

ICE's Head of Strategic Initiatives Michael Blaugrund had earlier joined Cooper onstage at the summit, where they discussed the exchange operator's onchain plans. Blaugrund said the firm was "very engaged" with the Avalanche team as it evaluates blockchain platforms. "Avalanche checks a lot of those boxes for us," he said.

NYSE's tokenized-securities plans

The NYSE announced in January that it was developing a platform for the trading and onchain settlement of tokenized U.S. equities and exchange-traded funds, subject to regulatory approval. Its proposed system combines the exchange's Pillar matching engine with blockchain-based post-trade infrastructure and is intended to support multiple blockchains for settlement and custody.

In August, ICE agreed to work with tZERO on infrastructure for tokenized securities markets, naming tZERO as a design partner for the planned NYSE-affiliated platform. However, the exchange operator has yet to name a blockchain for the platform.

Cooper expects some venues to begin offering 24-hour weekday trading within a year. "Will that be the mainstream exchanges? The largest in the world? The LSEs, the NYSEs, the CMEs? I don't know about that," he said, noting that the SEC released an innovation exemption on Thursday that now allows certain onchain trading of tokenized stocks.

"There are a lot of smaller venues that are making a very compelling case to the world to put liquidity on them," Cooper said.