digital assets -the New York company responsible for the Australian Stock Exchange’s blockchain-based clearing system- has blamed the stock exchange for abandoning its blockchain plans.
For his part, ASX representatives have responded in statements to Cointelegraph, calling the claims misleading..
For the past seven years, ASX has been on the brink of becoming the world’s first stock exchange to adopt blockchain technology., in association with the New York-based company. However, in a 180 degree turn, ASX announced on May 17 that it would drop the upgrade and likely go for more mainstream technology..
According to a recent report from The Australian, Eric Saraniecki, co-founder of Digital Asset, told attendees at a joint parliamentary committee on business and finance on June 8 that there were two main reasons why the blockchain upgrade had failed..
First of all, Saraniecki claimed that ASX was unwilling to provide important test data that would have allowed Digital Asset to better test the functionality of the new system..
“It affected our ability to design something that would meet all of their requirements.”
He said noor was unsure why ASX was so reluctant to hand over this key data, but ultimately caused Digital Asset to have to make “guess in a vacuum”.
Second, Saraniecki said that despite ASX speaking publicly of a “big bang” approach to replacing its nearly 30-year-old CHESS platform, at the same time telling Digital Asset to retain outdated elements of the old system. This reportedly led to further discord between the two companies and the eventual failure of applying the update..
ASX Defends Concerns Were Not Raised Adequately
However, in comments shared with Cointelegraph, ASX non-executive director David Curran said the problem was a lack of communication from Digital Asset regarding its concerns..
Curran said he had made it clear to “senior members of Digital Asset” and others that if there were concerns about the project, there were ways they could have been raised and resolved..
“I made that very clear to Digital Asset… I had little patience with software and hardware vendors, who said they didn’t feel like doing something but did it anyway because the customer told them to.”
“If they really believed it was wrong, they had mechanisms in place to prevent it and, in fact, to raise [esas preocupaciones]. In those conversations I agreed that this had not been done,” Curran added.
Curran clarified that he could not speak “too much” about the details of this matter due to the nature of the ongoing review..
ASX Managing Director and CEO, Helen Lofthouse, said that it was not so much the “flexible requirements” that were causing problems in the project, but rather the pre-existing requirements of the system itself and the way in which it related to the operation of settlements in Australia..
Lofthouse explained that the decision on November 17, 2022, to announce an update pause stemmed from the conclusion that the original solution design “wasn’t going to be able to do what we needed it to do.”which was both to meet current market requirements and to give flexibility.”
Although it has been informed widely that ASX had completely discarded blockchain technology, ASX Chief Information Officer Tim Whiteley declared Australian tech publication ITNews that “no firm decision” had been made.
“We remain on track to announce a solution design in the last quarter of this calendar year and continue to explore all options for solution design,” Whiteley added..
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