Wall Street's private blockchain obsession is a 'race to the bottom,' Ethereum advocate Raman warns

But familiarity with blockchains and distributed-ledger technology has moved on since 2016. The question now is whether the market really cares about decentralization and the aims of the blockchain originators.

The rapid adoption of gated systems with clear sponsors suggests the answer is "No," said Christian Catalini, founder of the MIT Cryptoeconomics Lab and the former chief economist of Facebook’s Diem stablecoin project.

“This phase is all about enterprise sales,” Catalini said in an interview. “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.”

Enterprise sales is where Etherealize comes in. The company was seeded by a grant from Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin and the Ethereum Foundation in January 2025 and raised $40 million in Series A funding later the same year.

BlackRock's new Ethereum-based funds are sign of things moving in what Raman called the right direction. After beginning with the BUIDL token on Ethereum prior to regulatory clarity, the next set of BlackRock funds is compliant with the GENIUS Act, the U.S. regulatory framework for stablecoins.