Etherealize CEO: Wall Street's closed blockchains are a "race to the bottom"
Vivek Raman, co-founder and CEO of Etherealize, has sharply criticized the growing trend on Wall Street: the creation of closed blockchain networks with restricted access. In his view, this path leads the industry into a dead end, which he bluntly calls a "race to the bottom."
Fragmentation Instead of Consolidation
Raman emphasizes that consortium networks, which major financial institutions are now actively promoting, do not just fail to solve problems—they exacerbate them. Instead of pooling liquidity and creating a unified space for interaction, they fragment the market into isolated "pockets." This is, in essence, a return to the very closed systems that blockchain was supposed to move away from. The key advantages of the technology—interoperability and liquidity concentration—are completely nullified in such projects.
Architecture of the Future: A Public Base Layer
My position here aligns with the view of the Etherealize head. His company's strategy is built on promoting Ethereum as an open foundation for institutional solutions. Raman insists that privacy and access control should be implemented not at the level of a separate blockchain, but as an overlay on top of public infrastructure. He draws an elegant analogy: Ethereum is HTTP, and the layers of privacy and restrictions are HTTPS. It makes sense to build a secure layer on top of an open protocol, rather than creating a parallel closed network.
Examples of "Consortium Chains 2.0"
As the latest wave of such solutions, Raman cites Canton Network from Digital Asset, the Arc project from Circle, and Tempo from Stripe. He calls these "consortium chains 2.0," drawing parallels with failed attempts of the past. He recalls the sad fate of the interbank initiative R3 and the corporate platform Hyperledger, which were heavily promoted starting in 2016 but never gained widespread adoption. History seems to be repeating itself, but with new names.
"We have always maintained that the base layer requires global, open, permissionless infrastructure," Raman stated. It is worth noting that back in June, he asserted that traditional financial organizations had begun integrating Ethereum-based solutions into real business processes.
My analysis: Raman's criticism is completely justified. Closed blockchains are an oxymoron that strips the technology of its core value. They may solve narrow tasks, but they will never become the foundation for a global financial system. However, as long as major Wall Street players think in terms of control and isolation rather than openness and synergy, this cycle of the "race to the bottom" will continue. The question is only who will be the first to realize that the winner is not the one who builds walls, but the one who builds bridges.