Australian Stock Exchange fires developers working on blockchain project

Article reading time:
1 min.

The Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) is terminating its relationship with 200 developers who were tasked with bringing blockchain to ASX's clearing and settlement system, CHESS.

The system has been in operation for over 25 years, managing the settlement of share trades and recording shares in daily trading volume. In total, the system processes about $3.2 billion daily.

The exchange planned to upgrade the system to giveissuers and investors more control and secure the market activity of the exchange. However, an independent audit conducted by Accenture identified many issues, including: technical limitations and delays associated with the application programming interface (API), as well as scalability issues.

The project was started in 2017, howeverdevelopment was too expensive and time consuming. The release date was constantly postponed until 2024, and then completely canceled. The company does not intend to transfer developers to other projects related to cryptocurrencies or blockchain, so they are simply fired.

The company emphasized that the CHESS system, in its current form, still remains safe and stable, despite the problems associated with trying to update it.

Earlier, the Technical Council of Australia (TCA) said that the proper regulation of digital assets could help the development of the cryptocurrency and blockchain industry, adding $40 billion to Australia's GDP.