Hey, folks.
We're recording at Chainlink's smart Con event, and joining me is vivek Ramon, who is the co founder and CEO of Etherealized. VIVEC.
Great to have you, Thanks so much for having me. Good to see you.
Yeah, Vivic, tell us a bit about yourself and what is etheroralized.
So I'm not a crypto person. I'm actually a Wall Street person, which is finally in vogue now. I spent eleven years on Wall Street at the traditional finance banks Morgan Stanley, UBS, Stochebank, No Mira from twenty twenty nine to twenty twenty and I traded a bunch of credit products which are we're the backbone of the US economy.
But their technology, their operations, their settlement was the most stone age type technology I've ever seen, and so I did it for eleven years, built up an amazing network, love everyone on Wall Street, but nothing ever changed in tech land.
So I left Wall Street, which.
People don't do that often, and shared found Ethereum and I was like, this thing is It's the platform where Wall Street should tokenize and trade their assets. So I've been working on that for five years independently. For a long time, I knocking on a lot of doors, getting a lot of rejections last year when the regulatory wind shifted, when the ethtfs were approved, when Larry Fink started saying the whole world's gonna be tokenized, I was like, now
it's time to actually mobilized and institutionalized. So sure I set up Etherealized, backed by the Ethereum Foundation and Metallic with support from the etherorem ecosystem overall to build the institutional arm for.
The Etherem ecosystem. And that's that's what Etherialized is today.
That's incredible. And to your point, Etheroreum has become this layer that all of Wall Street and all the tradifi forms want to build on. I mean Black Rock launched Biddle on their first Exactly what is it like looking back again you're a Wall Street guy and seeing all these institutions and firms coming in.
It's it's almost like sigh over relief because I felt like I was wrong for so long. I was like, I was like, I swear that I see blockchain as a solution to Wall Streets. Just technology and operational issues and everything wants to upgrade for the technology era. But the financial sector hadn't, so I was like, am I crazy? And after some time when you saw the regulatory hostility, I was like, will I ever be able to build
in the US with a financial platform? And so seeing that it's finally not only vindicated, but like now all trientify firms are they have a blockchain mandate, they actually have to integrate blockchains. Just it's good to see that we will be able to realize the potential of blockchains becoming the hub for all financial activity as well as
much more than that. But to start getting the financial sector financial sector on board is a is a really really good upgrade to the whole system and a really cool use case to show.
It feels like the markets, the economies, and possibly parts of the government will all run on blockchain rails eventually. It seems that's the direction that Puck is heading in.
I think that the ironic part is when blockchains are that backbone that you said for governments and for the financial sector and for social media and for everything, no one's going to know they're using a blockchain, so etherea is going to be invisible, but it'll be everywhere, kind of like the Internet, Like no one thinks about the Internet, but it's everywhere. But now we have the Internet for money, and it's safe and it's secure, and it's reliable, and
it's global and it's not owned by anyone. And that's why like Ethereum is such a standout platform to win this blockchain race.
Chikin's one digital gold.
Ethereum I think is gonna win the platform for everything, and I want to make sure that happens because that is the ultimate potential of blockchains. So yeah, we're here to advance Etheroereum responsibly and get to show real use cases.
So walk us through what's the mission of etherorialized and how can folks leverage the platform and so forth.
So Etheroralized started off educating institutions about all the things they can do with blockchains, and that includes tokenization. That includes building their own custom blockchains, which are layer twos on Ethereum, and that includes using applications, building applications, decentralized finance, I like to call it decentralized finance, programmatic finance programming,
or assets actually unlock automation. We started educating about all of that across the board to the byside of Wall Street, to the cell side of Wall Street, to asset managers, to investment advisors and taught about everything very quickly. We realize that everyone wants to deploy something in Ethereum, but no one has the expertise to do it.
So we built up.
An engineering arm. So we started building the solutions. So we're building ways. We're building ways to tokenize assets, We're building ways to build different layer twos. We're building infrastructure like privacy, so tokenized assets can actually be compliant trade privately. So we're building a lot of tools, and the idea is to onboard as many assets, as many institutions, and as many new players into the Etherorem ecosystem.
So we've seen Etherorem's ecosystem blossom and grows significantly. And you have a lot of layer two so are you also working with the layer twos?
Absolutely?
I think the layer twos are such an important part of Etherem's ecosystem. I think any blockchain system that thinks that the whole financial sector will live on one layer is it's a little naive in my view. I think every firm wants their own customized blockchain, they want their own block space, they want some privacy, some public. They want some compliance integrations into some parts of the chain. That is only possible with a modular architecture, and that's
where the layer twos come in. The layer twos can be faster, they can be cheaper, they can have different security assumptions, they can have different Wallstreet players on them, they can onboard the world that way.
So I think the layer twos, I see a.
World We're gonna have a blossoming amount of layer twos all plugging into this liquidity hub that's Ethereum Layer one.
So do you see a future.
And I'll give the example of Sony because they built Sonyum. I believe a layer that many brands and companies this is kind of the model build our own blockchain using the security layer of the Ethereum Layer one and getting the smart contract benefits and all that jazz.
It's almost like saying companies build on the Internet, but they build their own companies, Like they're not building new internets every time, but they build their companies on top of the Internet. So companies want to maximize profits, and companies want to have their own ecosystem and have their own customer retention. I always say, like Ethereum isn't a it's not a charity. It's the best place to do business. If a company wants to deplub blocking strategy, you do
it on Ethereum. You build your own layer two, You have your own customer attention, you have your new revenue sources, you have a new innovation. Coinbase did it with Base, Robinhood's doing it with their chain, and yeah, Sonium, like people outside of finance, there's a lot of potential outside of finance too. Sonium world Chain is doing this with their own ecosystem. There's so many and we're at the we're at the very start of the adoption curve, so there's gonna be a lot more.
It's amazing and I can't wait for the Clarity Act to pass, where there's going to be more clarity where these companies can now don't have to look over your shoulder, there's no ambiguity. They can just hit the ground, put their head down and start working. Are you expecting like even more innovation and incredible stuff coming out after that?
Oh?
I think the Genius Act the stable Coin Bill was the prelude, but look at what happened. The stable Coin Bill is now in law and every single bank, every single finteche everyone's launching their own stable. So see what
happens with a little bit of regulatory clarity. When the Clarity Act ultimately passes, it's gonna unleash I think ten x the innovation because that applies to defied, applies to other retailgnized assets, it applies to frameworks for all different kinds of blockschain architectures.
That's going to unlock some real upsides.
So I mean, I got the opportunity earlier this year to testify in front of Congress about the Clarity Acts, so we're familiar with it. We're very supportive, and it's a matter of when, not if. But when blockschain's got codified in the law, then we'll see the real the real potential. The bull market hasn't even started yet. This this many little like up and down and aneath is nothing. I think the real thing is going to happen when
we have regulatory clarity. Every company is deploying and then you have ethereum the networks to be pervasive and the assets gonna be worth trillions.
And that's what I'm excited for.
It's amazing. I can't wait to see what innovation comes out after this bill passes. Absolutely talk to us about etherialize and how you're working with institutions. I don't know if you can name drop, but you know, like give us some mock scenario of maybe someone who came to you and say, hey, we want to do this and how you're helping them.
Unfortunately, can't name drop, but that's a that's a good thing out of that thing, right. But we like to say the worthy ambassadors to Ethereum because there's a lot of things that you can do. So some institutions want to tokenize assets perfect, we'll either help do it for them, We'll point them at partners. Some institutions want to create their own Layer twos. Again, we'll do it for them. We'll point into partners. Some want to deploy on Layer twos.
Some want to just learn about the space. Someonet to learn about what DeFi is. Some want to design privacy architecture. We want to be the one stop shop for institutional adoption for Ethereum. So sure it's not Ethereum isn't one size fits all.
That's a good thing. That's why I have the Layer two roadmap.
We're here to be a funnel and sort of guide people and navigate people through the potential what this platform can do.
Have you had anybody approach you, I mean, maybe too early for this, because there's still we need the Cloudy Act. I want to launch my own token, rewards token to build my brand and customer retention and stuff like that.
Absolutely, and we do need the Clarity Act to make it like very low risk. All this should be codified. Love this is such a positive something. When I was testifying, I told I mean both sides of Congress or the Republicans Democrats, and I was like, this is the most non partisan technology ever. This makes Democrats should love this because it democratizes literally access to finance. Republicans should love this because it increases profit margins and creates business opportunity.
I don't see a more positive some technology out there. Maybe AI, but even AI, like I think blockchains are more positive some than AI is.
So so yeah, people are waiting on.
Clarity, but yes, absolutely rewards tokens, like everything outside of finance is also fair game. And that's that's where it's gonna be excited to see the innovation that happens on Etherium.
Oh for sure. So what's on your role map, what can we expect in twenty twenty six and things.
Like that, lots more tokenized assets, lots more intitutional layer twos and new novel applications, and real progress on zero knowledge proof technology and architecture and privacy.
Let's double click on the zero knowledge proof aspect, because privacy is very important to a lot of these institutions. How are you finding that balance with connecting to a or building on a public blockchain, connecting to other public blockchains and having privacy.
I think it's stable stakes.
I think that the space hasn't worked yet, and that's why we've seen so many iterations over the last ten years of privately held blockchains, company blockchains, consortium chains. The reason it hasn't opened up, and that's the reason we haven't seen blockchain blossom, is it hasn't happened on public networks. So you do need public networks, but on those public networks you need the ability to have selective privacy and programmable privacy, and we're getting there luckily.
Ethereums. Not luckily, it's by design.
Etherem's architecture has invested in zero knowledge proof technology very heavily for our last five plus years across the Layer one and a lot of the Layer twos. So we have the tools in place to eat the privacy that's needed, and so we're gonna help build it. We're gonna help push the ball forward and create the privacy tools that will allow for actual mass adoption.
And we're close. So, oh, for sure.
A dumb question, and this is a very new question.
No such thing.
There are a lot of institutions building on Etherorem. Is there a cap as to how many layer twos can be on Etherorem? Does that slow to network down at some point let's say a million layer twos? Right? And this may be true early to answer to this question, but what are your thoughts around that?
No, I think that the layer two designs pretty brilliant because layer twos themselves and customize their fees. They can customize how many times they post data to Layer one for security for example, everything can be toggled and customizable. That being said, Ethereum is continually increasing its capacity to have more and more Layer twos in anticipation of a world where we have millions of layer twos. So right now, if there are a million layer twos, fees would probably
be a lot higher on Layer one. Sure there's an upgrade happening in a month, and there's more upgrades happening after where the capacity to have Layer twos while also maintaining security and decentralization on Ethereum is maintained perfectly. And that's that's what we're excited for. So I do see a world of thousands or more of Layer twos and ethereymobile to handle.
That so exciting, Man Revec. We're going to have to do an in person and go more deeper into this, but thank you so much for joining.
Me, Thanks for having me. It was fun.
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