Wall Street's closed blockchains — a "race to the bottom": Etherealize CEO on the dead end of consortium networks
The wave of Wall Street interest in closed blockchain networks with restricted access is a strategic mistake that is leading the industry toward isolation and fragmentation. This position was voiced by Vivek Raman, co-founder and CEO of Etherealize, who called what is happening a "race to the bottom."
In my firm belief, this is an accurate diagnosis of the problem. The consortium networks that major financial institutions are now actively promoting replicate exactly the architecture that blockchain was supposed to move away from. Instead of a unified liquidity space, we get a set of sealed "aquariums" that do not interact with each other and destroy the technology's two main advantages—compatibility and capital concentration.
Privacy is not a reason for isolation
Raman's key argument is that privacy and access control are application-level tasks, not base protocol ones. He draws a direct analogy with the internet: Ethereum should play the role of HTTP, while additional encryption and authorization layers should play the role of HTTPS. Trying to build separate closed networks is like creating a "private internet" for banks, which is technically absurd and economically inefficient.
It is telling that the latest wave of such initiatives—Canton Network from Digital Asset, the Arc project from Circle, and Tempo from Stripe—merely repeats the mistakes of the past. Raman rightly reminds us of the fate of the R3 interbank platform and the Hyperledger corporate ecosystem, which were actively promoted starting in 2016 but never managed to offer the market a working model.
Institutional players are returning to Ethereum
Etherealize's position is consistent: global permissionless infrastructure is the only viable option for the base layer. And judging by the dynamics, this strategy is bearing fruit. Back in June, I noted that traditional financial organizations had begun moving from pilot projects to real-world implementation of Ethereum in operational processes. This confirms that the market is gradually realizing that open networks offer more opportunities for scaling and integration than any closed consortia.
My verdict: consortium chains 2.0 are an attempt to preserve old ways of thinking in new technology. Sooner or later, the market will weed out these experiments, and the approach offering maximum openness and compatibility will win.