Wall Street's closed blockchains are a 'race to the bottom': Etherealize CEO on the fatal mistake of consortiums
The financial industry is making the same mistake it did a decade ago, but now with more dangerous consequences. Vivek Raman, co-founder and CEO of Etherealize, sharply criticized the new wave of Wall Street's enthusiasm for closed blockchain networks with restricted access during a recent interview, calling this trend nothing less than a "race to the bottom."
In my deep conviction, this definition most accurately captures the essence of what is happening. Raman rightly points out that consortium networks, which the largest banks and corporations are actively promoting today, not only fragment liquidity but return us to isolated systems—exactly the problems blockchain was created to solve. Closed loops are unable to interact with each other, which completely kills two key advantages of the technology: system interoperability and liquidity concentration.
Etherealize consistently advocates the position that Ethereum should become the open base layer for institutional players. Raman insists: privacy and access restrictions are tasks at the application level or L2 solutions, not a reason to proliferate separate closed networks. He draws an elegant analogy: Ethereum is HTTP, the foundation on which everything is built, while private layers are HTTPS, an overlay that ensures security and confidentiality without breaking the underlying infrastructure.
Examples of this "consortium wave 2.0" include Canton Network from Digital Asset, the Arc project from Circle, and Tempo from Stripe. Raman reminds us that we have already been down this path: the R3 interbank initiative and the Hyperledger corporate ecosystem, aggressively promoted since 2016, never gained real traction. History repeats itself, but with new scenery.
"We firmly believe and have always held this position that a global, open permissionless infrastructure is necessary as the base layer," emphasizes the head of Etherealize. And this is not just rhetoric: back in June, Raman noted that traditional financial organizations have begun integrating Ethereum-based solutions into real business processes, moving from experiments to practical use.
My analysis: Raman's position is not a defense of Ethereum as an asset, but a defense of the architectural integrity of the entire industry. If Wall Street continues to build closed "gardens," we will get not a new financial internet, but an expensive imitation of the old system with new technologies. The question is not who wins this race, but whether institutional players realize they are running not toward the finish line, but toward a cliff.