NYSE has spent a year testing Avalanche technology, Ava Labs says

The New York Stock Exchange has spent roughly a year testing Avalanche technology and working with Ava Labs as it develops infrastructure for tokenized securities, according to Ava Labs President Charley Cooper.

Cooper said during an appearance at the Avalanche Summit in New York on Thursday that NYSE had examined both the technology and economics behind Avalanche while assessing how the network could fit into its existing systems.

NYSE’s work with Ava Labs has involved questions extending beyond blockchain performance. Cooper said the exchange wanted to determine whether the company understood its business model and the requirements involved in operating one of the world’s largest securities markets.

“They weren’t just kicking the tires on our technology,” Cooper said. “They wanted to make sure that we understood their business and their economics.”

Ava Labs and NYSE have developed what Cooper described as a “close working relationship” during the process. He did not say that Avalanche had been selected as the blockchain for NYSE’s planned tokenized securities platform.

“I leave it to the NYSE guys to talk publicly about where they are in the whole process,” Cooper said.

NYSE has been evaluating Avalanche for its onchain plans

Intercontinental Exchange Head of Strategic Initiatives Michael Blaugrund appeared alongside Cooper at the Avalanche Summit, where the executives discussed ICE’s work on blockchain infrastructure and tokenized markets.

Blaugrund said ICE, which owns NYSE, has remained “very engaged” with the Avalanche team while evaluating potential blockchain networks.

“Avalanche checks a lot of those boxes for us,” he said.

NYSE has not publicly identified the blockchain or blockchains that will ultimately support its planned digital securities venue. Its proposed architecture is being designed to work with multiple blockchain networks for settlement and custody.

The exchange has been developing the project throughout 2026. In August, NYSE President Lynn Martin said the company was continuing to build onchain settlement infrastructure after the exchange first disclosed its digital trading platform plans in January.

The proposed venue combines NYSE’s Pillar matching engine with blockchain based post trade infrastructure. Subject to regulatory approvals, it is expected to support tokenized versions of existing securities alongside assets issued natively onchain.

Planned features include continuous trading, immediate settlement, fractional shares, dollar denominated orders and stablecoin based funding. Tokenized shareholders would retain conventional rights attached to the underlying securities, including dividends and governance rights.

NYSE’s plans do not mean its existing stock market will be moved entirely onto a blockchain. The company has described a separate digital venue that would operate through qualified broker dealers while connecting blockchain settlement with regulated U.S. market infrastructure.

ICE is building out its tokenized securities infrastructure

ICE has continued bringing outside infrastructure companies into the project while NYSE develops the trading and settlement system.

At the end of August, ICE agreed to invest in tZERO and license its blockchain patents as part of an arrangement covering infrastructure for the planned NYSE affiliated platform. Crypto.news previously reported that ICE tapped tZERO as a design partner for digital transfer agent and broker dealer systems.

Under the agreement, tZERO is expected to help develop infrastructure supporting the issuance, trading and onchain settlement of public securities. The companies did not disclose the size of ICE’s investment or provide a launch date for the platform.

The arrangement does not make tZERO the project’s exclusive infrastructure provider. NYSE had already signed a separate memorandum with Securitize in March, naming the company as its first digital transfer agent eligible to mint blockchain native securities for participating issuers.

ICE has left the underlying blockchain question open as those partnerships progress. The platform’s post trade architecture is intended to support several networks, leaving room for different blockchain systems to handle settlement and custody.

Avalanche has meanwhile been expanding its presence in regulated tokenization projects. In July, Japanese tokenization platform Progmat migrated its security tokens from Corda 5 to a dedicated Avalanche Layer 1.

Progmat said the migration covered every active security token project it managed, representing more than ¥452 billion in underlying assets and issued securities. The move gave the assets Ethereum Virtual Machine compatibility while allowing the platform to retain its existing issuance, ownership and transfer processes.

Institutional tokenization activity on Avalanche has continued outside Japan. Hanwha Investment & Securities reportedly completed a tokenized securities platform supporting Avalanche and Hyperledger Besu as South Korea prepares to bring blockchain based securities into its regulated capital markets framework in February 2027.

SEC exemption opens another route for tokenized stock trading

Regulatory conditions around tokenized equities changed this week after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission granted eligible venues conditional relief to trade tokenized U.S. stocks through permissioned automated market makers and liquidity pools.

The five year exemption applies to qualifying tokenized National Market System stocks under a set of conditions covering shareholder rights, smart contracts, trading limits and coordinated market halts.

Cooper pointed to the regulatory action while discussing how quickly onchain stock trading could develop. He expects some trading venues to begin offering 24 hour weekday access within the next year, though he stopped short of predicting that major exchanges would move on the same timetable.

“Will that be the mainstream exchanges? The largest in the world? The LSEs, the NYSEs, the CMEs? I don’t know about that,” Cooper said.

Smaller venues could move more quickly as they compete for liquidity, according to Cooper.

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