ICE Still Hasn't Named a Blockchain for NYSE, Despite Avalanche's Summit Moment

Intercontinental Exchange has put its name on three partner agreements for the tokenized-securities platform it is building with the New York Stock Exchange — a transfer agent in March, a broker-dealer infrastructure partner in August, a distribution and data-sharing partner on Sept. 23 — and in none of those releases, nor the one that started the platform in January, has it named a settlement blockchain. That silence is the backdrop for what Michael Blaugrund, ICE's vice president of strategic initiatives and NYSE's former chief operating officer, said from the stage at Avalanche Summit NYC on Thursday, Sept. 17: Avalanche "checks a lot of those boxes" for the platform, and ICE is "very engaged" with the team, according to The Block's on-site report. It is the most direct on-record signal yet from inside ICE — delivered onstage, not in a press release.

A pattern of naming everything except the chain

ICE's own documents lay out a cadence. On Jan. 19, 2026, ICE announced it was developing a platform pairing NYSE's Pillar matching engine with blockchain-based post-trade infrastructure, targeting 24/7 trading with stablecoin-funded, near-instant settlement — designed, the release said, to support multiple chains for settlement and custody, with no vendor named. Two months later, NYSE and Securitize signed a memorandum of understanding naming Securitize the platform's first digital transfer agent. Five months after that, tZERO and ICE agreed that tZERO would design the platform's transfer-agent and broker-dealer infrastructure and license ICE its blockchain-patent portfolio, in exchange for an ICE investment in tZERO's financing round. Three weeks after that, on Sept. 23, Blockchain.com and NYSE signed a memorandum of understanding making Blockchain.com a distribution partner for the same platform — giving its more than 44 million user accounts access to tokenized U.S. stocks and ETFs pending regulatory approval — alongside a separate data-sharing arrangement in which ICE Data Services will distribute Blockchain.com's crypto market data to its own clients. NYSE Group President Lynn Martin called it a bet that "the future of capital markets belongs to institutions that unite the trust of traditional finance with the innovation and accessibility of digital assets." Four named announcements, three different roles — and every time, the blockchain layer stays unnamed.

Charley Cooper, who became Ava Labs' president on Aug. 18, 2026, told The Block that NYSE has been testing Avalanche's technology for close to a year — which would put the start of that testing around last September, roughly four months before ICE said publicly it was building anything at all. Avalanche is a mid-sized layer-1 network next to NYSE, one of the world's largest equities markets; handing it the settlement layer would be a scale jump for Avalanche, not a rounding error for NYSE — which may be part of why ICE has kept naming transfer-agent, broker-dealer and distribution partners while leaving that one layer unnamed.

What ICE has confirmed in its own name

The January release quoted Blaugrund calling the platform "a pivotal step in ICE's strategy to operate on-chain market infrastructure." Crypto Briefing reported the same platform is intended to collapse settlement to T+0, down from the standard U.S. equity cycle. In the August release, Blaugrund called tZERO's experience in regulated on-chain infrastructure "a valuable partner as we expand our upcoming digital transfer agent program." Both quotes are ICE speaking in its own name, in its own releases. Neither mentions a chain.

The Summit remark, and what surrounds it

Cooper stopped short of saying NYSE has picked Avalanche. "I leave it to the NYSE guys to talk publicly about where they are in the whole process," he told The Block. "Will that be the mainstream exchanges? The largest in the world? The LSEs, the NYSEs, the CMEs? I don't know about that." Blaugrund, who had joined Cooper onstage at the summit earlier, was more direct but still hedged: Avalanche "checks a lot of those boxes for us."

Crypto News Flash and Bitcoin.com both trace their Blaugrund quotes to the same Avalanche-published clip of the exchange, dated Sept. 17, rather than to independent reporting. Crypto News Flash's fuller version has Blaugrund saying, "As we've evaluated different platforms, Avalanche checks a lot of those boxes for us, so we're very engaged with the team," and states the remarks "do not amount to a final selection." Bitcoin.com, quoting the same clip, carries its own caveat: "While he did not assure that Avalanche would be the blockchain chosen for this initiative, Blaugrund stressed that, as they evaluated alternatives for enabling 24/7 trading using decentralized technology, Avalanche 'checks a lot of those boxes' for them." Bitcoin.com separately reports that a dedicated Avalanche Layer 1, rather than the shared C-Chain, is under discussion — reasoning a custom L1 would let NYSE set its own KYC rules — though neither Cooper nor Blaugrund addressed that architecture choice directly in the material reviewed here.

Crypto Briefing carries the same caveat in its own words: Blaugrund "was careful to note that no formal selection has been made." The outlet's only stated sourcing for his remarks is that he "added some color during the summit" — it does not say whether that traces to the same clip or to separate reporting, so the caveat appearing in a second outlet does not establish it as independently confirmed.

What's still open

Neither Cooper nor Blaugrund has put a timeline on when — or whether — NYSE's alternative trading system launches; Crypto Briefing reports that ICE has not given a firm timeline for the ATS's launch or its technology selection, and The Block describes the platform as subject to regulatory approval, not secured. No dated launch window has been announced. As of Sept. 23, ICE's own newsroom carries no release naming Avalanche or any other blockchain vendor for the platform — the acknowledgment so far lives only in Blaugrund's on-stage and clipped remarks, not alongside the Securitize, tZERO or Blockchain.com announcements. An ICE release naming a settlement chain would confirm the pattern breaking; ICE signing an infrastructure deal with a competing chain for that same layer would cut against it; NYSE's own ATS regulatory filing naming settlement infrastructure would settle the question either way.

Ava Labs' entity page tracks the company's full history with the ecosystem.