Ethereum Advocate Warns Wall Street’s Private Chains Risk Fragmenting Liquidity

Financial institutions have long favored private, permissioned blockchains because they can restrict participation, shield transaction data and enforce compliance. Yet the first enterprise-blockchain wave, including JPMorgan’s Quorum and R3’s Corda, often produced closed networks with limited connectivity. The issue matters as Wall Street tokenizes more assets: splitting securities and cash across incompatible ledgers could fragment liquidity, weaken price discovery and preserve the reconciliation costs blockchain was meant to remove.

In comments reported on Aug. 16, 2026, Etherealize co-founder and CEO Vivek Raman said Wall Street risked creating “consortium chains 2.0,” with institutions building rival private networks in a race to the bottom. Etherealize, which raised $40 million on Sept. 3, 2025, advocates Ethereum as a credibly neutral settlement layer. Raman proposed a multilayer model in which privacy, identity checks and permission controls sit above the open base chain, allowing regulated firms to protect sensitive data without sacrificing interoperability or shared liquidity.