Shanghai Stock Exchange, or SSE, announced a partnership with Hyperchain Technologies, (Hangzhou Qulian Technologies Co., Ltd.) to develop high performance blockchain tech and first test it in competitive bidding at its Main Board.

Many blockchain startups bade on the project and Hyperchain Technologies (Qulian)got the project. The program marks the first cooperation between a domestic stock exchange and a blockchain business, which would go a long way to the application of blockchain in securities market.

As a distributed file system, blockchain can work as a cost effective technology in reducing settlement time. Nasdaq has been leading the effort in adopting blockchain for clearing and settling over the counter transactions(OTC). The stock exchange launched its first blockchain product Nasdaq Linq, a platform for private shares trading. ASX Ltd., Australia’s main exchange operator, bought bigger stake in blockchain startup digital asset holdings(DAH) to replace an older settlement CHESS (Clearing House Electronic Sub-Register System).

At present, open source blockchain systems are only able to process several hundred transactions per second globally. At Hyperchain Technologies, however, they provide an enterprise-ready blockchain platform that is able to handle up to 10,000 transactions per second. The company will work to improve performance on transaction processing, verification, hardware development and RBFT as a way of catering to the core business of SSE.

“Blockchain could be widely used in OTC transactions and new businesses in securities market,”said Bai Shuo, chief engineer of SSE.

Last year, SSE released a research paper discussing the potential uses of blockchain in securities market and three suggestions are provided in the paper.

“First, regulators should speed up research on distributed ledger tech. Second, exchanges should work with industrial players to improve the current system. Third, traditional exchanges are encouraged to invest blockchain-related R&D and file for their own blockchain patents. “

This project is historic in that it marks the beginning of blockchain tech setting foot in the Main Board of a stock exchange. Industrial players believe that SSE will lead efforts to tap into the potential uses of blockchain in securities and scale and deploy blockchain applications.