Infinity's End? $31 Million NEX Project Could Be Biggest Casualty of DLT Cuts

Project Infinity, launched in May 2017 by NEX Group, could be the biggest bloodletting the distributed ledger sector has seen to date, having cost roughly $31.7 million and hemorrhaged dozens of jobs, former employees say.

Spearheaded by Jenny Knott, former head of NEX Optimisation, the project had a grand vision of bringing the company's entire post-trade services portfolio onto one interoperable blockchain architecture.

A blockchain industry source who said his company had been hiring former staff from Infinity, went further, alleging the project had not just been scaled back but had actually been "Canned."

In terms of the spiralling cost of the project, one former employee said NEX made a mistake when it decided to make Infinity a "Program," which brought added costs and expectations.

Another cost factor related to Traiana, the division of NEX most closely linked to the project, they said, which was doing a upgrade of its infrastructure that ended up on the project's books, thus increasing perceived costs.

Res Choussy, CEO of Traiana, said Project Infinity had absolutely not been shelved.

NEX could not comment on the number of jobs shed at the project, but confirmed the number of staff involved had been reduced.

Choussy said the DLT part of the project had been narrowed down to focus on post-trade FX. Indeed, NEX was a returning investor in the recently announced Series A funding round in Axoni, which is said to be building "a massive FX post-trade data network."

NEX is also an investor in DLT provider Digital Asset and was one of the early members of the Utility Settlement Coin project, although a source involved in USC said they have fallen out of communication with the group.

Opinion seems to be divided about how well the remains of Project Infinity's blockchain might fair once NEX becomes the property of U.S. exchange giant CME. The former NEX technology team member said the original vision of an all-purpose post-trade ledger with data analytics platform still has great value and may even be the "Crown jewels" in CME's eyes.