Russia’s National Settlement Depository Successfully Tests Blockchain-Based E-Voting System

Recently the Russia’s National Settlement Depository (NDS), an organization that provides settlement and depository services, began testing blockchain technology as a potential solution for a corporate e-proxy voting system. The results will not shock you but the origin of praise for the system just might. NDS began looking into solutions for e-proxy voting in August of 2014. The prototype they recently tested is based on the NXT platform. The system also adheres to the ISO 20022 standard for messaging. NDS worked with the UK based DSX Technologies to develop the e-proxy voting system. The....

The National Settlement Depository (NSD), Russia’s sole central securities depository (CSD), has announced it has tested a blockchain-based voting system. The de-facto securities system by law, the NSD provides settlement services for government bonds, municipal bonds and corporate bonds, accounting for 99% of domestic corporate bond issues. The announcement notably follows similar action in the US markets, with the DTCC revealing it is participating in trials and tests related to the emerging technology earlier this year. According to a release, the NSD used the NXT blockchain system to....

National Settlement Depository, Russia’s central securities depository, has successfully tested an e-proxy voting system based on a distributed ledger (blockchain) technology. It has been eight years since the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto introduced the definition of blockchain and implemented it in the original source code for his peer-to-peer digital cash system. While it is still unclear whether or not Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies have any real long-term value, many argue that the acceptance and wider adoption of blockchain technology are fast approaching. Various industries see the....

Thus far, 2016 has seen no shortage of financial incumbents touting blockchain, but perhaps the most surprising has been the warm embrace the tech has received from central securities depositories (CSDs), the entities that serve as intermediaries for securities transactions. Given the role of these businesses as often the sole arbiters of national and international markets, there has long been speculation they might be among the businesses threatened by distributed ledgers, or blockchain-enabled database environments in which the entities that are today served by CSDs are able to transact....

South Africa’s Central Securities Depositories (CSDs) Strate has signed a Letter of Intent with Russia’s National Settlement Depository NSD at the Sibos event in Geneva in September 2016 to forge a partnership that will develop solutions utilizing blockchain – or the Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT). The first use case is focused on proxy voting which is a vital process for decision-making bodies to delegate their voting power to other members of the same body to vote in their absence, and/or to select additional representatives. Such processes are crucial to financial markets....