Avalanche Competes to Power 24/7 Stock Settlement

• NYSE is designing equities around continuous settlement.
• Avalanche has emerged as one infrastructure candidate.
• The harder problem may be liquidity outside U.S. market hours.
• Regulatory approval remains a key dependency.

The New York Stock Exchange’s planned tokenized securities venue is becoming a test of something larger than blockchain adoption: whether U.S. equities can move from a market built around trading sessions and T+1 settlement toward one where trading and settlement operate continuously.

Michael Blaugrund, vice president of strategic initiatives at NYSE parent Intercontinental Exchange, said Avalanche meets many of the requirements ICE is considering for its blockchain infrastructure and that the companies are closely engaged. That does not amount to a final selection, but it provides a clearer picture of the technology NYSE is evaluating for the venue.

BREAKING: NYSE plans to bring 24/7 trading on chain with their in-development ATS platform

“As we’ve evaluated different platforms, Avalanche checks a lot of those boxes for us, so we’re very engaged with the team”

– Michael Blaugrund of Intercontinental Exchange/NYSE pic.twitter.com/Ml9YSZtoCS

— Avalanche (@avax) September 17, 2026

NYSE previously said the platform would combine its existing Pillar matching technology with blockchain-based settlement, support trading against stablecoins and potentially operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week, subject to regulatory approval.

The opportunity is straightforward. The difficult part starts after Wall Street’s normal trading day ends.

From T+1 to Atomic Settlement

The clearest way to understand NYSE’s project is to compare what happens after an investor presses “buy.”

U.S. securities currently settle on a T+1 basis, meaning the final exchange of securities and cash generally occurs one business day after execution. The SEC shortened that cycle from T+2 in May 2024, partly to reduce credit, market and liquidity risks between execution and settlement.

NYSE’s proposed architecture could compress that interval dramatically. Tokenized securities and stablecoin payment can potentially move simultaneously, making delivery and payment part of the same transaction rather than separate processes completed the following day.

That changes more than speed. It potentially reduces the period during which counterparties have unsettled exposure to each other.

Avalanche Has to Solve an Institutional Problem, Not a Crypto One

Blaugrund’s comments suggest NYSE is evaluating blockchains against requirements that look very different from the usual competition over transactions per second.

ICE has identified considerations including performance, institutional wallet support, interoperability and the ability to connect with other parts of securities infrastructure. Avalanche currently satisfies many of those requirements, according to Blaugrund.

The final system may also need to interact with transfer agents, stablecoin issuers, broker-dealers and traditional infrastructure such as DTCC.

This makes the potential Avalanche role narrower but more consequential than simply hosting tokenized stocks.

The blockchain would become one component in a market whose surrounding institutions remain regulated financial intermediaries.

It also means NYSE does not necessarily need investors to know which chain sits underneath their trade. For a broker or institutional investor, reliability, settlement certainty and interoperability are likely to matter more than the network brand.

24/7 Trading Creates a Liquidity Problem

Moving settlement onchain is primarily a technology and regulatory challenge. Making 24/7 stock trading liquid is an economic one.

The existing U.S. equity market concentrates enormous liquidity into established sessions. NYSE’s core trading hours run from 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. ET, while extended-hours markets already tend to have lower participation and wider bid-ask spreads than regular sessions.

A tokenized venue can remain technically open at 3 a.m. on Sunday. That does not guarantee enough buyers, sellers and market makers will be present to produce efficient prices.

This creates several questions for the eventual venue: how wide will spreads become overnight, how much depth will be available during weekends, and how closely will tokenized shares track their conventional counterparts when the primary market is closed?

Those questions become especially important around corporate news.

NYSE has indicated that familiar safeguards such as Limit Up-Limit Down controls and trading halts will remain part of the model. A company releasing market-moving information on Saturday could therefore force the venue to balance continuous trading against investor-protection mechanisms designed for a market that traditionally closes.

This may prove a more difficult test than achieving near-instant settlement.

Regulation Is Now Moving Closer to the Technology

The timing is significant because the SEC has just created a clearer route for experimentation with tokenized U.S. equities.

Its September 17 Innovation Exemption permits qualifying Tokenized Securities Venues to test tokenized NMS stock trading through permissioned onchain infrastructure under defined conditions. The framework includes temporary relief from certain exchange and dealer requirements while maintaining securities-law protections.

That does not constitute approval of NYSE’s platform. NYSE has said its project remains subject to regulatory approval, and the precise regulatory structure of the eventual venue will depend on its final design.

But the two developments now point in the same direction. Market operators are building infrastructure for tokenized equities while regulators are developing frameworks through which new trading architectures can be tested.

The Real Test Starts When Traditional Markets Close

If NYSE eventually launches the venue, headline trading volume will provide only a partial measure of whether it works.

The more revealing comparison will come outside conventional market hours: overnight and weekend spreads, available depth, price divergence from the underlying stock, settlement failures and the behavior of liquidity around trading halts.

Those metrics can answer a question that blockchain throughput alone cannot.

NYSE already knows how to operate a liquid stock market. What it does not yet know is whether tokenization can extend that market across the hours when its existing liquidity machine is normally switched off.

Avalanche may ultimately provide part of the infrastructure needed to attempt it. The harder challenge will be convincing enough market participants to stay on the other side of the trade when Wall Street has traditionally gone home.