Ethereum advocate warns Wall Street’s private blockchain push is failing

Raman compared Ethereum’s public mainnet to HTTP, the open base layer of the internet. Just as HTTPS added security on top of that open foundation, he argued, permissioned and privacy features should be built on top of a public chain rather than replacing it.

Enterprise money versus decentralization ideals

Not everyone agrees. Christian Catalini, founder of the MIT Cryptoeconomics Lab and former chief economist of Facebook’s Diem stablecoin project, said the market may not care about decentralization the way blockchain’s originators intended.

“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.”

Catalini warned that if curated networks with clear corporate sponsors win out, “some of the pro-competitive benefits of blockchains will never materialize.”

Gated systems appeal to mainstream finance because they offer built-in privacy and reduced counterparty risk. Those are real selling points for institutions that handle sensitive transactions and face strict regulatory requirements.

BlackRock’s Ethereum bet and the regulatory factor

Raman pointed to BlackRock as evidence that open networks can attract serious institutional money. The asset management giant launched its BUIDL token on Ethereum and is now building new funds compliant with the GENIUS Act, the U.S. regulatory framework for stablecoins. Ethereum already serves as the base layer for billions of dollars in tokenized assets and underpins much of decentralized finance.

Etherealize itself was seeded by a grant from Buterin and the Ethereum Foundation in January 2025 and raised $40 million in Series A funding later that year. The company’s mission is to bring traditional finance firms onto Ethereum’s open mainnet.

“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.”

The tension is real and unresolved. Whether Wall Street’s next round of blockchain adoption looks more like the open internet or a collection of competing corporate intranets depends on which model proves it can handle real money at scale.