WisdomTree, T. Rowe Price Among TradFi Firms to Test Avalanche's Blockchain Subnet

Financial institutions including T. Rowe Price, WisdomTree, Wellington Management and Cumberland have joined layer 1 blockchain Avalanche’s Evergreen subnet “Spruce” to make trade execution and settlements more efficient.

Avalanche launched Evergreen earlier this month with the goal of offering a line blockchain-deployment and tooling products for financial institutions. Evergreen subnets are Ethereum Virtual Machine-based chains with a permissioned validator set and a custom gas token to power transactions, according to a press release.

The traditional-finance firms plan to use Spruce as a test network for a variety of applications and assets to measure benefits of on-chain trade execution and settlement, the press release said. The testnet will use valueless tokens allowing institutions to experience full functionality of Avalanche’s Subnet architecture without putting capital at risk.

The move comes as TradFi firms have been pushing deeper into blockchain technology and crypto-related products for the last few years, indicating a promising step toward greater adoption among large financial institutions.

“Participating in the Avalanche Spruce testnet presents a valuable opportunity to deepen our understanding and analysis of smart contract technology and the potential applications of public, permissioned blockchains in financial markets,” Blue Macellari, head of digital-assets strategy at T. Rowe Price Associates, said in the release.

Institutions will use decentralized-finance apps on Spruce to execute foreign-exchange and interest-rate swaps, according to the press release.

Avalanche has several EVM-based subnets, including the Intain Subnet, which is a tokenized asset-backed security application, and the Deloitte Subnet, which is a platform for efficient Foreign Exchange Management Act fund disbursements.

Edited by Aoyon Ashraf.

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Lyllah Ledesma

Lyllah Ledesma is a CoinDesk Markets reporter currently based in Europe. She holds bitcoin, ether and small amounts of other crypto assets.

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