Australian Securities Exchange or ASX has delayed its planned transition to blockchain technology for processing equity transactions by six months as it requires more time for user development and testing.
The launch date will now be shifted from the fourth quarter of 2020 to around March-April 2021. ASX also extended industry-wide testing plans and mandatory accreditation by the same time frame.
It was last year that the exchange said it would replace its current processing system, the Clearing House Electronic Subregister System or CHESS, with blockchain technology to cut costs for customers. The decision to switch over follows two years of testing of the distributed ledger technology.
According to Cointelegraph, the initial testing phase included two independent third party security reviews of systems developed by Digital Asset, a consulting company that helps financial institutions to adopt DLT solutions. ASX had bought a minority stake in the U.S. blockchain developer Digital Asset Holdings in January 2016.
With the transition, ASX will become one of the biggest mainstream financial markets to use the blockchain technology, which is a digitized, decentralized, bookkeeping platform or ledger.
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