Press Release

VIA PR NEWSWIRE

Austin, Texas – May 28, 2025  Connamara Technologies, the leader in fully-integrated end-to-end exchange technology, is pleased to announce that its EP3^® exchange infrastructure solution is the technology choice of Figure Markets, a leader in decentralized finance.  Figure Markets successfully launched its innovative DeFi marketplace on March 20, 2024.

Figure Markets is Building the Exchange for Everything

Figure Markets is democratizing finance through the blockchain by building an exchange for everything – a decentralized custody marketplace for crypto, stocks, bonds, credit and more. The exchange combines leverage, margining, and liquidity with extensive borrowing options and unique investment opportunities.  Decentralized custody ensures that exchange members have control of their own assets and data.

In February 2025, Figure Markets launched the first interest-bearing transferable stablecoin (YLDS) native to a public blockchain, registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

EP3 is Powering a New Breed of Exchanges

EPS is a cloud-first, end-to-end exchange and clearing solution seamlessly integrating all key functions into a single, robust platform, including market access, market-data distribution, order matching and execution, exchange operations and administration, risk management, market surveillance, regulatory reporting, clearing, and settlement.

It is purpose-built for the next generation of exchanges and marketplaces, with technology that is quick-to-market, cost-accessible, and easily adaptable to traditional asset classes as well as new asset classes. These include equities, futures, crypto, tokenized assets, events, sports, and more.

EP3 is powering exchanges around the globe, including predictions exchange ForecastEx (a wholly-owned subsidiary of Interactive Brokers), Brazilian tokenized equities exchange BEE4, and digital assets infrastructure platform ZeroHash.

Figure Markets Head of Product – Exchange Randy Myers:

“We’re impressed by Connamara’s ability to meet our exacting requirements with EP3 and deliver customized exchange technology tailored to our self-custody model. As Figure Markets expands its product offerings and customer base, we expect to lean on EP3 to help accelerate our growth.”  

Connamara Technologies CEO Jim Downs:

“It’s a privilege to work with the team at Figure Markets. They are a team of professionals that are bridging the gap between DeFI and TradFi. We are grateful for their trust. We’ve enjoyed the challenge of working together to build this exciting new marketplace and look forward to witnessing their continued success.

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About Connamara Technologies and EP3

Connamara Technologies is the only provider of end-to-end, cloud-first fully-integrated exchange infrastructure technology, empowering new and existing exchanges to operate with exceptional efficiency and reliability via its EP3 exchange and clearing platform. Engineered for the evolving needs of the next generation of exchanges and marketplaces, EP3 is shaping the future of financial markets.

About Figure Markets

Figure Markets is democratizing finance through blockchain. The company is building the exchange for everything – a decentralized custody marketplace for crypto, stocks, bonds, credit, and more. By offering best-in-class leverage, margin trading, and liquidity, Figure Markets provides members with extensive borrowing options and unique investment opportunities. With its decentralized custody exchange, it puts members in control of their own assets and data, disintermediating legacy brokers, exchanges and lenders. 

Figure Markets is backed by leading venture capital firms and strategic partners, including Jump Crypto, Pantera, Distributed Global, Faction Lightspeed, NewForm Capital and CMT Digital. Figure Markets was founded by a seasoned team of entrepreneurs and operators from TradFi, fintech, and DeFi, including Mike Cagney and June Ou.

This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy the foregoing securities. Registration with the SEC means that the SEC has made the offering effective. The SEC has not approved or disapproved these securities, nor have they passed upon the accuracy or adequacy of this offering.

For more information about Figure Markets, visit www.figuremarkets.com

For more information about Connamara, visit www.connamara.tech

MEDIA CONTACT

Daniel Davis

Head of Growth
[email protected]

We are continually enhancing the functionality and performance that EP3 offers Exchange Operators. In response to customer feedback, EP3 now supports the following:

FIX Order Gateway and Market Data Gateway Enhancements

Thanks to our friends at Connamara, the creators and maintainers of QuickFIX/go, the EP3 FIX Order Gateway can be configured to reset the sequence numbers of a session without disconnecting the session. This is important for exchanges that engage in 24/7×365 trading.

Exchange Operators can set up the FIX order gateways in a highly available configuration by deploying identical FIX sessions on two separate physical gateways. This allows exchanges to run totally redundant FIX end points for order submission. 

Additional logging option: The EP3 FIX gateways can be configured to publish log statements directly onto the EP3 messaging infrastructure rather than to a log file. The addition of this option improves the performance of the FIX gateways while retaining the valuable information contained in the FIX logs. Using this option allows additional downstream services to be set up to monitor, alert, and analyze FIX gateways in real time. 

For Exchange Operators whose customers may require it, EP3 FIX Order Gateways can be configured to return an ExecutionReport with a status of PENDING_NEW. A PENDING_NEW status indicates that the corresponding order was received by the Exchange (at the FIX gateway) but has not been processed by the matching engine. Customers may desire this behavior if their order management systems expect this status as part of their workflow. 

Performance Updates

Improvements to matching engine performance were made by reducing the size of critical path messages. 

Exchange Operators can now tune EP3 Pre-Trade Risk workflows to only check the orders from specific customers. This can significantly improve the overall performance of EP3. 

Banking Service Enhancements

The Banking Service manages deposit and withdrawal workflows between EP3 and commercial banks. Several functional enhancements were made including making it easier for Exchange Operators to verify cash held in a commercial bank account versus the value recorded in EP3. 

Trading API Update

A new API endpoint, GetOpenOrders, was added to the Trading API. This new endpoint allows exchange customers to monitor their open orders. GetOpenOrders eliminates load on the database during trading and thus improves the overall performance of EP3. 

More granular filtering was added to the Trading API endpoint CreateOrderSubscription. Exchange Operators can now filter the subscription by a combination of instrument symbols and/or accounts. This granularity allows Exchange Operators to establish more targeted subscriptions for downstream order monitoring and reporting.

Additionally, the CreateOrderSubscription can be queried to return only a snapshot of the orders in an EP3 book.

 Learn more about how EP3 can power your exchange

On March 7, 2025, Maureen Downs was awarded the Trailblazer Lifetime Achievement Award (Vendor) at the WatersTechnology Women in Technology and Data Awards.

Following her win, WatersTechnology asked Maureen to share some thoughts about her professional background and her career journey.  In this Q&A, Maureen discusses her successes and challenges, offers thoughts on mentorship, and reveals the best career advice she ever received.

maureen-downs-connamara-witad-waters0325

SAVE THE DATE!

The Association of Futures Markets and EP3 by Connamara Technologies are pleased to announce that AFM Tech Day 2025 is coming to Chicago, USA on November 14 at the Union League Club.

Join us for insightful discussions on implementing exchange solutions, the latest tech trends and industry insights.

Stay Tuned – more details coming soon.

We are continually enhancing the functionality and performance that EP3 offers exchange operators. In response to customer feedback, EP3 now supports the following:

Improved Performance Observability

EP3 now produces additional Prometheus metrics that allow exchange operators to monitor and alert on end-to-end performance of order entry. These metrics measure the time from order arrival at the FIX Gateway to the publication of the FIX execution report acknowledging the order. 

Dependent Services Health Checks

All EP3 services implement the gRPC Health Check Interface. This allows developers utilizing any EP3 API to first determine the health of dependent services prior to interacting with the API. 

Performance Updates

Several performance updates were made to EP3 and EP3 components during March including: the reduction of message size on the critical path to decrease message bandwidth and increase throughput, updating of decimal libraries to increase order entry throughput and performance, improved the time to recover services when there are large numbers of users and accounts present in EP3, and improved database query performance.

Banking Service Enhancements

The Banking Service manages deposit and withdrawal workflows between EP3 and commercial banks. Several functional enhancements were made including making it easier for Exchange Operators to verify cash held in a commercial bank account versus the value recorded in EP3.

Trading API Update

Exchange Operators can now implement manual or automatic order approval workflows by previewing orders before submission  to the matching engine.

Learn more about how EP3 can power your exchange.

EP3 by Connamara Technologies has been nominated for Best Matching Engine for Exchanges and Electronic Trading Venues by TradingTech Insight Awards – USA 2025 from A-Team Group.

These awards recognize “excellence in trading solutions and services for capital markets and focus on vendors providing exceptional trading infrastructure, trading technology and data solutions.”

Also nominated in this category are Aquis Technology, GMEX and IONLIST.

Winners will be announced in June 2025.

Spotlighting Leading Innovators in Capital Markets TabbFORUM’s NOVA Awards, honors the financial industry’s ongoing commitment to technology-driven innovation and recognizes, in particular, companies that excel and stand out from the crowd. 

The NOVA honors go to 40 organizations based on recent and sustained accomplishments in innovation. They range from major exchanges, market infrastructures and information networks, to high-performance technology and trading platforms, niche data providers and blockchain developers focused on institutional and capital-market applications.

While attending the International Futures Industry Conference in Boca Raton, Daniel Davis, Head of Growth at Connamara Technologies, discussed with TABB Group CEO Bruce Morris how the start-up costs to create a marketplace have fallen dramatically, as has the time it takes to get to market, for all asset classes. Dan also talks about the cloud’s role in the evolution of exchange technology.

VIA PR Newswire

LONDON – Connamara Technologies, a leading provider of exchange technology, announced that co-founder and chair Maureen C. Downs was honored with the “Trailblazer Lifetime Achievement Award (vendor)” by WatersTechnology at the Women in Technology and Data Awards in London on March 7, 2025. 

This award was presented to the candidate who has “affected change within her organization and has acted as a mentor for female colleagues and women in general.” 

For 30 years, Maureen has been a trailblazer in capital markets and financial technology.  She has served in key leadership roles at brokerages, trading firms, trade associations, and regulatory bodies, including two terms as the first woman Chair of the National Futures Association, the self-regulatory body for the U.S. derivatives industry, from 2020-2024.  

In 2022, Maureen co-founded Connamara Technologies, Inc. Under her leadership, Connamara developed and launched EP3^®, an end-to-end exchange and clearing platform that is asset-agnostic, cost-accessible, and quick-to-market.  EP3 is powering new exchanges and marketplaces across the globe.

Maureen was one of 125 freshman women selected for admission to a student body of over 6,000 men when the University of Notre Dame first began admitting female students. She graduated summa cum laude and 1st in the College of Business. Subsequently, she pursued careers as a Certified Public Accountant and Attorney at Law at a time when women represented only a small fraction of the professionals at most major firms. Maureen rose to prominence in the U.S. derivatives industry – an industry that, to this day, remains largely male-dominated.

Chosen from a group of accomplished women in the capital markets and financial technology industry, Maureen’s achievements are something that Connamara Technologies is proud to celebrate.

WatersTechnology is a leading information source for technology trends in capital markets. For a complete list of winners, click here.

About Connamara Technologies

Connamara Technologies is the leading provider of fully-integrated exchange infrastructure, empowering new and existing exchanges to operate with exceptional efficiency and reliability. Its EP3^® platform is a new breed of exchange and clearing technology that seamlessly integrates all key functions into a single, robust platform. It is cost-accessible, adaptable, scalable and quick-to-market. Engineered for the evolving needs of the next generation of exchanges and marketplaces, EP3 is shaping the future of financial markets.

To learn more, please visit www.connamara.tech or connect on LinkedIn

For media inquiries, please contact:

Contact
Daniel Davis, Head of Growth
[email protected]

Today, Connamara Technologies announces the release of the new Trade Clearing API for EP3. 

An exchange using a central limit order book is responsible for managing the transaction that occurs when the price of a buy order matches that of a sell order. What happens next, post trade, is the clearance and settlement of the trade. This is, among other things, where the buyer transfers the funds used to buy the asset to the seller, and the seller transfers the purchased asset to the buyer. This process is loosely called Trade Clearance and Settlement.

While EP3 does provide the functionality for the clearance and settlement of trades made in the EP3 matching engine, some Exchange Operators choose to use third-party clearing and settlement services for this process. 

Because EP3 offers the Trade Clearing API, Exchange Operators can create the workflows and interactions necessary to utilize the services of third-party clearing providers.

The EP3 Trade Clearing API allows exchange operators to interact with third-party clearing platforms by: 

• Reporting to the clearing platform
  • New transactions and block trades made on EP3
  • The cancellation of previously reported trades
• Receiving reports from the clearing platform of
  • Trades that have been rejected by the clearing platform
  • Cleared volumes and open interest for instruments traded on EP3

At Connamara Technologies, we continually strive to improve how our customers interact with the EP3 platform. A key pattern we put in place when we first designed EP3 was to allow our customers to interact with the functionality and data within EP3 via a set of well-defined and easy-to-use APIs. 

Learn more about the EP3 Trade Clearing API.