Etherealize CEO says Wall Street’s return to permissioned chains risks recreating fragmented blockchain systems

Vivek Raman, co-founder and CEO of Etherealize, said Wall Street’s renewed push into private, permissioned consortium chains risks reviving the same fragmented structures blockchain was meant to replace. Backed by Vitalik Buterin and the Ethereum Foundation, Raman argued that gated networks such as Digital Asset’s Canton Network, Circle’s ARC and Stripe’s Tempo could weaken interoperability and liquidity by forcing institutions into closed ecosystems where participation depends on membership or approval. He described the trend as a race to the bottom. Raman said Ethereum mainnet should serve as a global, open and permissionless base layer, similar to HTTP, while institutions add privacy and access controls at the application layer or on layer-2 networks. He pointed to BlackRock’s new Ethereum-based fund as an example of how clearer regulation may push institutional capital toward open infrastructure rather than proprietary networks. Etherealize, which focuses on bringing traditional finance onto Ethereum, received seed backing from Buterin and the Ethereum Foundation in January 2025 and later closed a $40 million Series A that year. MIT Cryptoeconomics Lab founder Christian Catalini also warned that if sales-driven permissioned networks become dominant, some of blockchain’s pro-competition benefits may never be realized.