Wall Street's closed blockchains are a "race to the bottom": Etherealize CEO on the dead end of consortium networks
In recent months, Wall Street has once again turned its attention to closed blockchain networks with restricted access, but this trend has an influential critic. Vivek Raman, co-founder and CEO of Etherealize, has openly stated that consortium chains are a step backward that destroys the very essence of the technology. In his assessment, such initiatives are not just useless but harmful—they fragment liquidity and return us to the isolated systems that blockchain was supposed to move away from.
Raman does not mince words, calling the new wave of such projects a "race to the bottom." His main argument is simple: closed circuits do not interact with each other, destroying two key advantages of distributed ledgers—interoperability and liquidity concentration. Instead of spawning new isolated "walled gardens," he proposes building privacy and access control on top of public infrastructure.
Public Base Layer as the Only Path
Etherealize's position is consistent: Ethereum should become the open base layer for institutional players. Raman draws a vivid analogy: Ethereum is HTTP, while restricted-access and privacy layers are HTTPS. Additional security and confidentiality features should logically be implemented at the application or L2 solution level, rather than creating separate closed networks from scratch.
As examples of the latest wave of "closed" solutions, he cites Canton Network from Digital Asset, Circle's Arc project, and Stripe's Tempo. Raman has dubbed all of these "consortium chains 2.0." He reminds us that we have already been down this path: the R3 interbank initiative and the Hyperledger corporate ecosystem were actively promoted starting in 2016 but never gained real traction. History is repeating itself, and this is cause for concern.
"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.
Notably, back in June, Raman noted that traditional financial organizations had begun integrating Ethereum-based solutions into real business processes. However, the current trend toward closed networks threatens this progress.
My view: Raman's criticism is absolutely justified. Financial institutions, trying to control everything, forget that the value of blockchain lies in openness and network effects. Closed consortia are an attempt to fit new technology into old business models, which in the long term leads to stagnation. The market has already shown the failure of such approaches, and the current wave will likely end the same way—in quiet obscurity.