LiquidShare to Use ConsenSys’ Blockchain on Post-Trade Settlement

LiquidShare has entered into a partnership with ConsenSys’ PegaSys team in order to bring blockchain into its European post-trade settlement infrastructure for shares in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

Over the past year, LiquidShare has worked to produce a private and permissioned platform built on Ethereum with the business logic coded in smart contracts to model their cash, security, and delivery versus payment mechanisms. The usage of the blockchain allows a peer-to-peer to settlement between custodian nodes for listed and non-listed shares, removing friction costs and providing transparency to SMEs.

LiquidShare successfully executed pilots with 15 financial institutions, including BNP Paribas and Société Générale as custodians, at the end of 2018. The platform is now live on parent company Euronext’s markets and connects to asset managers’, broker-dealers’ and custodians’ information systems, enabling them to more easily invest in and process listed and non-listed European SMEs.

PegaSys is developing a Java-based enterprise version of the Ethereum client, Pantheon, with a focus on transaction throughput, privacy, and specialized validation features. LiquidShare intends to take advantage of Pantheon’s advanced enterprise features and enter its production phase at the end of 2019. All LiquidShare services will be fully compatible with Ethereum, a central point in the open source blockchain community, which is pioneering the asset tokenization and digitization space.

Thibaud de Maintenant, CEO of LiquidShare, commented:

“We have very stringent requirements in terms of performance, privacy and security as we are building a regulated entity operating a private blockchain to register and settle in the private and public markets. PegaSys’ blockchain offering will help us achieve scalability and finality in this stringent regulatory environment.”

Daniel Heyman, PegaSys Program Director, said:

“We are building the gold-standard for enterprise blockchain that can support multiple use cases in a private blockchain, and also have the possibility of leveraging the advantages of the public Ethereum blockchain.

LiquidShare is one of the most advanced use cases in the financial industry, and we are excited to work with them on bringing production systems to market.”

Joe Lubin, Founder at ConsenSys, commented:

“LiquidShare is an industry-changing technology for equities markets and a powerful example of Ethereum’s enterprise-readiness. The collaboration with PegaSys shows the power of Pantheon, its enterprise features, and the growing interest in using an Enterprise Ethereum built for mainnet compatibility.”