NYSE Tested Avalanche (AVAX) Technology for a Year, Ava Labs President Says

NYSE's Year of Testing Avalanche

The New York Stock Exchange has spent roughly a year testing Avalanche (AVAX) technology while it builds infrastructure for tokenized U.S. stocks and ETFs, Ava Labs President Charley Cooper said on Thursday. Cooper made the disclosure during an appearance at the Avalanche Summit in New York, explaining that NYSE examined both the technical performance of the network and the economics behind it as it weighed how the chain could fit into existing market systems. “They weren’t just kicking the tires on our technology,” Cooper said. “They wanted to make sure that we understood their business and their economics.” He described what he called a close working relationship between Ava Labs and NYSE while declining to claim a victory: “I leave it to the NYSE guys to talk publicly about where they are in the whole process.” Appearing alongside him, Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) Head of Strategic Initiatives Michael Blaugrund said the NYSE parent has remained “very engaged” with the Avalanche team while evaluating blockchain networks, and that “Avalanche checks a lot of those boxes” for its requirements. NYSE has not publicly named the chain or chains that would power its planned digital securities venue, and the proposed architecture is deliberately built to accommodate multiple networks for settlement and custody. The exchange first disclosed its digital trading platform plans in January, and NYSE President Lynn Martin said in August that work on onchain settlement infrastructure was continuing. The venue pairs NYSE’s Pillar matching engine with blockchain-based post-trade infrastructure and, pending regulatory approval, would support tokenized versions of listed securities alongside natively issued onchain assets, with continuous trading, immediate settlement, fractional shares, dollar-denominated orders and stablecoin-based funding; tokenized shareholders would keep conventional rights, including dividends and governance. To assemble the stack, ICE agreed late August to invest in tZERO and license its blockchain patents, building on a March memorandum with Securitize, NYSE’s first named digital transfer agent. COINOTAG’s Avalanche desk has tracked the buildout through 2026.

appearance at the Avalanche Summit in New Yorkhttps://x.com/TheBlockCo/status/2100603819696484564?s=20

SEC Exemption and the 24-Hour ATS

The executive’s remarks circulated through Avalanche’s official X account on September 17, and they sit inside a larger ICE project: an alternative trading system, a regulated venue separate from the main exchange, designed to let stocks and ETFs trade as tokens around the clock. Blaugrund said in January that building market infrastructure for onchain trading, settlement, custody and funding is a strategic priority for ICE, so the ATS itself is not new — what is new is the public naming of Avalanche as a leading candidate. His comments mark an evaluation stage only: neither ICE nor NYSE has announced a formal contract or an adoption decision. The regulatory backdrop shifted this week, when the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission granted eligible venues conditional five-year relief to trade tokenized National Market System stocks through permissioned automated market maker pools, with conditions covering shareholder rights, smart contracts, trading limits and coordinated market halts. Cooper expects some trading venues to begin offering 24-hour weekday access within the next year, though he stopped short of predicting that the largest exchanges — the LSEs, the NYSEs, the CMEs — will move on the same timetable, noting that smaller venues competing for liquidity could act faster. The ecosystem context reinforces the momentum. In July, Japanese tokenization platform Progmat migrated every active security token project it manages, representing more than ¥452 billion in underlying assets, from Corda 5 to a dedicated Avalanche Layer 1 with Ethereum Virtual Machine compatibility. South Korea’s Hanwha Investment & Securities has completed a tokenized securities platform supporting Avalanche and Hyperledger Besu ahead of the country’s regulated framework for blockchain securities arriving in February 2027, as we covered in Hanwha Securities to Tokenize Stocks and Bonds on Avalanche (AVAX). Institutional reach is broadening into brokerage too, with Charles Schwab set to add the asset to its 39.9-million-account platform per Charles Schwab to Add Avalanche (AVAX) to Schwab Crypto’s 39.9M-Account Platform — a pipeline where tokenized shares would ultimately function like any other dapp on the network. Readers tracking the market in real time can follow live spot and futures prices on MEXC.

Tokenized Equities Race Takes Shape

The two threads form a single arc: a year of due diligence at the world’s largest securities market, now paired with a regulator that has cleared a legal route for permissioned tokenized stock trading. The most load-bearing primary record this week remains the official Avalanche post carrying Blaugrund’s remarks — it confirms ICE’s engagement with the network but also its limits, because what was disclosed is an evaluation, not a signed selection, with no launch date and no disclosed investment size. Our reading is that NYSE’s testing amounts to technological validation of the Avalanche stack, and with the SEC’s five-year exemption in place, the network now sits credibly inside the shortlist for a round-the-clock U.S. equities market. Institutional demand is pulling large-cap altcoin attention toward tokenization plays, and markets have started pricing that in: AVAX spot gained 6.8% over the past 24 hours.