Russia's Sole Central Securities Depository Trials Blockchain Voting

Apr 28, 2016 at 1:00 p.m. UTCUpdated Apr 28, 2016 at 10:27 p.m. UTC. The National Settlement Depository, Russia's sole central securities depository, 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 create the open-source prototype, with the goal to enable shareholders to more easily vote as part of annual shareholder meetings.

"E-Proxy Voting's blockchain-based prototype registers the instructions directly in the distributed ledger, which is used by all chain participants at once," the release explains.

In statements, Sergei Putyatinski, IT director at the NSD, said that test have revealed the system can support 80 transactions, in this case data issuances representing votes, per second, but that the organization hopes to scale the system's throughput to 300 instructions per second.

"The next step is legal and cryptographic evaluations of the new prototype. Their findings will enable us to consider running actual voting."

Since mid-2014, Russian issues have been using electronic technologies and ISO standards to facilitate remote voting as part of a bid to make such processes more transparent and convenient.

The test further follows news that Nasdaq has launched a similar trial in Estonia designed to solve challenges related to participation in shareholder voting.