Wall Street's closed blockchains are a "race to the bottom": Etherealize CEO on the dead end of consortium networks
Vivek Raman, co-founder and CEO of Etherealize, has sharply criticized the growing trend on Wall Street—the creation of private blockchain networks with restricted access. In his view, such initiatives are not merely misguided but fundamentally contradict the very essence of the technology they seek to use.
In my analysis of this trend, it is clear that the consortium networks Raman speaks of lead to liquidity fragmentation and return us to the era of isolated systems. This is a step backward, not forward. The head of Etherealize aptly described the new wave of such projects as a "race to the bottom," emphasizing that closed loops cannot interact with each other, destroying two key advantages of blockchain—compatibility and pooled liquidity.
Etherealize, which I closely track, consistently promotes Ethereum as an open base layer for institutional players. Raman insists that privacy and access control should be implemented at the upper levels—in applications or L2 solutions—rather than by creating separate closed networks. He draws a vivid analogy: in this model, Ethereum is HTTP, and additional privacy layers are HTTPS. The logic is simple: why invent a new internet when you can simply secure the connection?
Ghosts of the Past: R3 and Hyperledger as a Warning
As examples of the latest wave of "closed" solutions, he cites Canton Network from Digital Asset, the Arc project from Circle, and Tempo from Stripe. Raman calls this "consortium chains 2.0" and reminds of the sad fate of their predecessors—the interbank initiative R3 and the corporate ecosystem Hyperledger, which were actively promoted since 2016 but never gained widespread adoption.
"We firmly believe and have always held this position that a global, open permissionless infrastructure is needed as the base layer," Raman emphasizes. This stance looks particularly weighty against the backdrop of his June statements that traditional financial organizations have begun integrating Ethereum-based solutions into real business processes.
My verdict: Raman's position is not just a defense of Ethereum's interests but a rational view of network economics. Closed consortia historically lose to open standards, and Wall Street's attempt to isolate itself is a temporary solution that will create more problems than it solves. The only question is how much time and capital will be wasted before the market realizes this.