Intercontinental Exchange is evaluating Avalanche as a potential blockchain network for a tokenized securities platform, extending a year-long technical assessment of how public-chain infrastructure could connect with established trading and settlement systems. No final network selection has been announced, and neither ICE nor Avalanche has said that Avalanche will power a New York Stock Exchange product.
The review places Avalanche among the public blockchain networks seeking to serve regulated financial markets as exchanges explore tokenized versions of U.S. stocks and exchange-traded funds. ICE’s work is focused on practical requirements: transaction performance, institutional wallet support, interoperability and connections to the existing infrastructure used to trade, clear and settle securities.
Michael Blaugrund, ICE’s head of strategic planning, said the company has been working closely with the Avalanche team during its assessment of blockchain options. He said Avalanche meets many of ICE’s requirements, though the company has not disclosed a deployment timetable, the scope of any prospective platform or a final technology decision.
Nyse plans on-chain settlement for stocks and etfs
The evaluation follows the NYSE’s January announcement that it planned a platform for tokenized U.S. stocks and ETFs that would use on-chain settlement. Such a system would record ownership transfers and settlement activity on a blockchain, while still needing to fit within the rules, custody arrangements and market-structure processes governing regulated securities.
ICE, the NYSE’s parent company, also invested in digital-assets firm tZERO in August and named it as a platform partner. That agreement gives ICE another route into tokenized-market infrastructure, while the Avalanche testing indicates the company is examining the underlying networks that could support such services.
The distinction between a partner relationship, an infrastructure assessment and a final production choice is substantial. Running tests with a blockchain developer can help a market operator measure costs, throughput, privacy controls and integration demands without committing the NYSE’s trading venues to that network.
Avalanche’s assessment materials cited transaction costs generally ranging from around $0.001 to $0.02. Low transaction charges can matter for a securities platform handling frequent transfers or post-trade updates, although fees are only one part of the cost equation for regulated markets. Custody, identity verification, compliance monitoring, systems integration and legal operations would all remain central to any live service.
Compliance controls are central to the evaluation
ICE’s review also covers controls designed for institutional settings, including the ability to apply rules at the protocol level without cutting off connections to other blockchain ecosystems. The features cited include whitelists for users and transactions, permissions for validators, restrictions on smart-contract deployment, and network isolation controls.
Those tools could allow an operator to limit participation to approved entities or create a dedicated environment for regulated activity. They also address a tension facing tokenized securities platforms: traditional market operators require defined oversight of participants and transactions, while blockchain systems are valued for interoperability and shared technical standards.
Avalanche has promoted its Evergreen framework as an institutional configuration that can support permissioned deployments. The evaluation is also considering privacy and auditability mechanisms, an area where securities platforms must balance confidential trading information with regulatory recordkeeping and supervision.
The list of Avalanche-related deployments cited in the assessment points to the types of applications the network is trying to attract. These include Wyoming’s stablecoin initiative, the California Department of Motor Vehicles vehicle-title effort, and South Korean custodian BDACS’s KRW-backed stablecoin, KRW1.
Other referenced projects include Japanese payments company TIS’s multi-token platform, the UAE PASS digital identity system, and Progmat, a Japan-based securities token platform that has moved $2.7 billion of assets on-chain, according to the material provided. Hanwha Investment & Securities has also built a tokenized securities platform on Avalanche.
These examples do not establish that an NYSE platform would use the same structures or operate under the same rules. They do show why networks competing for financial-market workloads are emphasizing identity, permissions and asset administration alongside transaction speed.
Public chains compete for market infrastructure roles
The U.S. policy environment has become more favorable to experiments with tokenized stock trading platforms after the Securities and Exchange Commission opened an innovation-exemption path referenced by the assessment. That framework has added urgency to the race among blockchain networks to connect with established venues and liquidity pools rather than simply host stand-alone digital-asset applications.
John Wu, president of Ava Labs, said some securities trading venues are expected to begin offering 24-hour weekday trading within the next year. Longer trading hours could create demand for settlement systems capable of operating beyond the conventional market day, although extending access to trading does not by itself resolve questions around liquidity, corporate actions, custody and regulatory oversight.
Wu said the largest global exchanges may not be among the earliest adopters, while smaller venues are seeking ways to attract liquidity. That dynamic could give newer or specialized platforms room to test tokenized products before the largest market operators commit to full-scale rollouts.
The trend among financial firms has increasingly favored adapting established blockchain technology instead of building a completely new base-layer network. Robinhood, for example, has pursued Robinhood Chain using technology from Ethereum’s layer-2 ecosystem. The approach can reduce development time and allow firms to use tools that have already been tested in blockchain environments.
For ICE, Avalanche’s appeal would depend less on a single technical metric than on whether it can operate alongside the complex systems that already support U.S. securities markets. The ongoing evaluation suggests that the contest for tokenized-market infrastructure is moving from concept announcements toward the less visible work of fitting blockchain networks into real trading operations.
Explore how tokenized equities work and their integration with traditional markets beyond Avalanche’s institutional blockchain experiments.
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