Vivek Raman, CEO of Etherealize, argues that Wall Street’s pivot toward private, permissioned consortium blockchains threatens to recreate the siloed financial systems that public blockchains were designed to dismantle.
Etherealize, a blockchain infrastructure company backed by Vitalik Buterin and the Ethereum Foundation, raised $40 million in Series A funding in 2025 after receiving an initial grant from Buterin and the Foundation in January 2025. The company positions Ethereum’s mainnet as a neutral base layer for institutional finance, underpinning billions of dollars in tokenized assets.
Raman’s warning reflects a structural tension in institutional blockchain adoption. Private networks like Digital Asset’s Canton Network, Circle’s ARC stablecoin payments system, and Stripe’s Tempo blockchain market privacy and reduced counterparty risk as core features. Yet Raman contends this approach sacrifices the interoperability and liquidity that make blockchains valuable.
“It’s like we’re having consortium chain 2.0,” Raman said. “This is going to end up being a race to the bottom for consortium chains. You’re going to have consortium chains versus consortium chains.”
History offers a cautionary precedent. R3’s 2016 consortium effort initially attracted major banks but Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Santander withdrew before year-end. Hyperledger, a Linux-affiliated blockchain ecosystem, similarly drew enterprise players without sustaining adoption.
Raman advocates a layered model. “We strongly believe, and always have done, that you need a global, open, permissionless infrastructure as the base layer. Then you can build all the permissioning on top of it. Whether that’s at the app layer, whether that’s the L2 layer, that’s where you should have the customizability.”
BlackRock’s recent moves illustrate the institutional calculus. The asset manager’s Ethereum-based BUIDL token preceded regulatory clarity on stablecoins. Subsequent BlackRock funds are compliant with the GENIUS Act, a U.S. regulatory framework for stablecoins.
Christian Catalini, founder of MIT Cryptoeconomics Lab and former chief economist of Facebook’s Diem project, identifies the stakes. “This phase is all about enterprise sales. So there’s this really interesting tension just now, right as the real money is about to come in, and it’s not clear which way we will land. If we land on these networks that are more curated and have a clear sponsor and anchor entity shaping their rules, then some of the pro-competitive benefits of blockchains will never materialize.”
Raman contends regulatory clarity favors open networks. “When we have regulatory clarity the institutional money goes toward open networks because that’s the rails that no one owns. If you go to consortium chains, you’re kind of paying the consortium. You have to get permission or be one of the consortium members. And if you’re not an early consortium member, then the incentives go away very quickly.”
The outcome remains unresolved. Ethereum, at 10 years old, has sustained a critical mass of institutional activity. Whether consortium alternatives gain traction or institutional capital consolidates on open layers will shape the infrastructure for tokenized finance over the next decade.
