Digital Asset has signed a deal with Nasdaq to integrate its smart contract language Daml into a software solution that Nasdaq provides to other organizations, the Nasdaq Marketplace Services Platform.
The startup portrayed the alliance as a two-way thing where Digital Asset’s clients who are already using Daml can connect to marketplaces using Nasdaq’s software. And Nasdaq’s software clients can deploy Daml solutions.
Digital Asset already has high profile capital markets clients such as the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX), HKEX and SGX. A little bit of digging shows both HKEX and SGX use some other Nasdaq technology offerings.
“The partnership with Digital Asset is another step forward in Nasdaq’s journey to create a dynamic marketplace that supports all kinds of markets worldwide,” said Johan Toll, Head of Digital Assets, Market Technology at Nasdaq. “While Daml has a strong foundation in capital markets, we see opportunities for this technology in similar types of non-financial markets where supply and demand needs to be matched and later settled in blockchain or other platforms.”
Nasdaq’s Marketplace Services Platform targets two distinct groups, traditional capital market operators such as HKEX and SGX and new marketplaces, especially digital asset marketplaces where it has signed 13 exchanges. It supports both native and asset-backed token issuance, matching, settlement and custody.
Meanwhile, Digital Asset secured a $120 million Series D funding round two months ago as it continues to deploy its Daml smart contract language. A key Daml differentiator is that it supports applications that can run on many different blockchain technologies and some conventional databases. It aims to be a solution to the major challenge of blockchain interoperability.
