The wave of work around blockchain thinking is building, with the ASX on Friday listed among a list of bulge bracket names recapitalising US IT firm Digital Asset Holdings.Digital Asset will work with the ASX to produce an infrastructure prototype for the exchange's clearing and settlement business.A shift in business architecture, rather than business model, is in the works, although strategists in and outside the ASX must be looking hard at scenarios to manage. The disintermediation of the securities exchange is one scenario not too far fetched for some.ASX said it invested A$14.9 million in New York-based Digital Asset Holdings to acquire a five per cent equity interest. The ASX will also hold a warrant that may lead it a bigger shareholding and board seat.Twelve other financial institutions scrambled to fund Digital Asset to pursue what may prove a busy workload. They are: ABN Amro, Accenture, BNP Paribas, Broadridge Financial Solutions, Citi, CME Ventures, Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation, Deutsche Borse, ICAP, JP Morgan, PNC Financial Services and Santander.The ASX said that, as part of a four-year system overhaul, their new post-trade platforms would be based off blockchain technology. Digital Asset would be key supplier. The ASX has budgeted A$50 million for the wider project.Danielle Henderson, a financial services consultant with experience managing the post trade side, said the ASX needed "a strong technology partner with an understanding of the technology."Henderson said Digital Asset, along with IBM and others, would pool the blockchain code via the Linux Foundation."So the code will be open source. The competition will come from the applications on top of that, in the same manner businesses compete on the internet."Henderson said "we may see a number of competing international solutions" around clearing and settlement of securities "and not a nirvana of a single [blockchain] platform."She said she theorised the ASX was "looking to build a real live working prototype, to test the capacity to handle the number of transactions and participants in the market place."These the ASX would benchmark against traditional vendors of clearing and settlement IP, such as NASDAQ OMX, she said. Asked what cost benefits might flow from some testing innovation in methods at the exchange, Henderson said "there's been a fair bit of work done on the costs of post-trade and the cost of a trade."Costs have not come down at the exchange level but margins have squeezed at the intermediary level."