Failed blockchain project ends with big fine for fibs about it being on track

A final humiliation for Australia’s Securities Exchange and its attempts to run a bourse on distributed ledgers

The attempt by Australia’s Securities Exchange (ASX) to replace its core trading platform with a blockchain-based system has ended with an A$20.5 million fine ($14.2 million/£10.6 million), further humiliation after the project flopped.

The ASX runs a platform called the Clearing House Electronic Subregister System (CHESS) to process and track trades on its exchange. In 2017, the ASX decided to replace CHESS, citing difficulties maintaining the application, which the bourse coded in COBOL and ran in OpenVMS on Itanium processors.

The ASX is a listed company so its own shares trade on CHESS.

The organization decided to replace CHESS with blockchain-based architecture. As explained in its 2019 annual report [PDF], the ASX believed its decision would help it “develop new services that improve the efficiency and standardisation of processes, reduce operational risk, and...

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