March 29, 2024

A man walks past the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) board showing stocks down 1.42 percent shortly after noon on weak global leads in Melbourne on August 12, 2010. The benchmark S&P/ASX 200 was off 63.2 points in the morning session at 4,392.3, while the broader All Ordinaries gave up 64.7 points to 4,415.0. AFP PHOTO/William WEST

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The Australian Securities Exchange was planning to built and deployed one of the largest implementations of blockchain technologies to date, all by 2020. That it has been developing it since January 2016, but because of recent events, it won’t be launched until at least March 2021.

A summary of feedback collected from users and stakeholders was included in the announcement of the delay, spotted by ITNews. In general, it seems that many remained unconvinced such a large system can be effectively built so quickly. As such, the Australian Securities Exchange has seen fit to give itself some more time.

Many respondents raised a number of clarifying questions around the timeline for release management and the testing environments. They requested earlier access to system documentation, a detailed timetable for documentation release, a longer period between technical documentation release and commencement of testing, and more information on the types of testing in each environment.

It is worth to keep in mind that Australian Securities Exchange has long come under fire for its ambitious DLT project. Patrick McConnell, honorary fellow of the Macquarie Applied Finance Centre, penned a scathing review last December. In it, he said that even describing Australian Securities Exchange’s new system as a “blockchain” is a real stretch.

The proposed solution is probably as far from ‘pure’ blockchain that one can get, while still claiming to be blockchain. It has so relaxed the constraints of pure blockchain, that it clearly demonstrates the limits of this technology rather its success,” McConnell wrote. “This ‘Blockchain-Lite’ not only fails to achieve most of the claimed benefits of DLT, it actually adds costs and risks for market participants.”

McConnell claims the ASX is “firmly the single central authority” of its new permissioned DLT, on a network it controls. Such a system does not encourage the transparency or decentralization often touted by blockchain evangelists.

It looks like, the Australian Securities Exchange doesn’t really care about the tech, despite knowing all the buzzwords.

We hope that this extra time is enough for the Australian Securities Exchange to build something that works.

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