Athens Exchange Group Selects Sui for Blockchain Book Building

Greek national stock exchange becomes the first to partner with a Layer 1

ATHENS, Greece, March 6, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Athens Exchange Group, the Greek stock exchange referred to as ATHEX, today announced their selection of Mysten Labs as their partner to evaluate the technical capability of upgrading its Electronic Book Building (EBB) to a distributed ledger technology platform using Sui, the layer 1 smart contract platform created and contributed to the public by the core research team behind Facebook's Libra/Diem and Move projects.

The EBB is a new fund-raising mechanism provided centrally as a meta-layer over the existing trading order routing system, to effectively use the network of ATHEX Members (banks and brokerage firms) and their clients, with the aim of offering liquidity for business proposals of companies seeking funds. ATHEX's EBB offers many advantages for customers, such as determination of best offer price for transferable securities such as stocks and bonds, increased transfer efficiency and more. 

In collaboration with Mysten Labs, the web3 infrastructure company and original contributor to Sui, ATHEX will leverage Sui's unique architecture to reimagine its EBB benefiting from Sui's combined focus on speed, security and a developer-friendly experience. ATHEX's technologists are also receiving assistance on a local level, as Mysten Labs' Solutions Engineering team is based in Athens, where they support partners worldwide.

Yianos Kontopoulos, CEO of ATHEX Group, said, "We are delighted to partner with Mysten Labs to create the next iteration of our EBB service – from their highly experienced team to the capabilities of Sui itself, we believe we have found the right team to help us harness the true potential of blockchain technology."

Evan Cheng, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Mysten Labs, said, "Collaborating with a globally recognized financial institution like ATHEX is a momentous step forward not just for the Sui blockchain, but also for web3 itself. Financial tools have long been touted as a use case for blockchain technology, but we have yet to see real world adoption. We are honored to be working with the ATHEX team and look forward to realizing the promise of the blockchain among traditional investors."

About ATHEX:

The Athens Exchange Group (ATHEXGROUP) operates the Greek Capital Market, offering trading services for equities, derivatives, and bonds; performing clearing and settlement services, maintaining the registry of securities and providing services for market and energy exchanges, in full alignment with international practices and the European regulatory framework.

About ATHEX EBB

ATHEX Electronic Book Building (EBB) is a novel fundraising mechanism provided by ATHEX that facilitates the fundraising process, offering a streamlined platform for businesses to connect with potential investors.  EBB leverages the extensive network of ATHEX Members, including banks and brokerage firms, along with their clients, to enhance liquidity for companies seeking funds and ensuring smooth order collection, efficient pricing, distribution and settlement. It has been used by issuers, underwriters and co-ordinators during the last 5 years for raising over €10bn of corporate bonds, IPOs and Secondary Market Placements  with large float and remarkable oversubscription. 

About Sui

Sui is a first-of-its-kind Layer 1 blockchain and smart contract platform designed from the bottom up to make digital asset ownership fast, private, secure, and accessible to everyone. Its object-centric model, based on the Move programming language, enables parallel execution, sub-second finality, and rich on-chain assets. With horizontally scalable processing and storage, Sui supports a wide range of applications with unrivaled speed at low cost. Sui is a step-function advancement in blockchain and a platform on which creators and developers can build amazing, user-friendly experiences. Learn more: https://sui.io

About Mysten Labs

Mysten Labs is a team of leading distributed systems, programming languages, and cryptography experts whose founders were senior executives and lead architects of pioneering blockchain projects. The mission of Mysten Labs is to create foundational infrastructure for web3. Learn more: https://mystenlabs.com

SOURCE Mysten Labs