Ava Labs president details NYSE’s year-long testing of Avalanche technology

The New York Stock Exchange’s parent company has spent the past year kicking the tires on Avalanche. Whether it actually buys the car is still an open question.

Ava Labs President Charley Cooper revealed at the Avalanche Summit on September 16-17 that the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) has been conducting a year-long evaluation of Avalanche’s technology. The focus: a potential on-chain Alternative Trading System, or ATS, designed to enable around-the-clock trading of tokenized stocks with instant settlement.

What ICE is actually building

The broad strokes of this initiative aren’t brand new. ICE first disclosed plans for the ATS back in February 2026, describing a system that would pair the NYSE’s Pillar matching engine with blockchain infrastructure to settle tokenized equities against stablecoins.

Michael Blaugrund, ICE’s Vice President of Strategic Planning and former NYSE COO, added some color during the summit. He confirmed that Avalanche meets many of the requirements for such a platform. But he was careful to note that no formal selection has been made.

Cooper, who was appointed Ava Labs president on August 18, described a close working relationship with ICE. His framing was enthusiastic but measured: a year of testing is meaningful, but it’s not a contract signing.

Why this matters beyond the summit stage

ICE operates the NYSE, 12 other exchanges, and six clearing houses across multiple asset classes globally. When ICE evaluates technology for a year, the signal is that the technology passed initial scrutiny and survived the kind of institutional due diligence that kills most vendor relationships in the first quarter.

Alternative Trading Systems are SEC-regulated venues that match buyers and sellers outside of traditional exchanges. Putting one on-chain, with stablecoin settlement, would collapse the settlement timeline from T+1 (itself a recent upgrade from T+2) to essentially T+0.

Traditional stock markets operate roughly six and a half hours per day, five days a week. A blockchain-based ATS would let investors in Tokyo trade tokenized US equities at 2 AM New York time, settling instantly without waiting for American markets to open.

The competitive landscape for institutional blockchain

Avalanche isn’t the only chain pursuing institutional finance integrations. The network’s subnet architecture, which lets institutions spin up customizable, permissioned blockchain environments while still connecting to the broader Avalanche ecosystem, has been a key selling point for regulated entities.

Cooper’s willingness to discuss the evaluation publicly, even without a confirmed deal, suggests Ava Labs is confident enough in the trajectory to accept the reputational risk of the disclosure. Blaugrund’s participation at the summit reinforces that ICE is comfortable with the relationship being public knowledge.

ICE has not provided a firm timeline for when the ATS would launch or when it would finalize its technology selection. The regulatory overlay for a blockchain-based ATS adds another layer of complexity, particularly around how the SEC would treat tokenized securities trading on novel infrastructure.