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Feels like Ethereum is now in this endgame race for RWA tokenization supremacy, and the runway is getting shorter.
Ethereum has all the right infra and characteristics (incl. credible neutrality, decentralization, trustlessness, etc.) but the TardFi corporate decision-makers remain largely unaware or indifferent.
Every ETH maxi is hoping for a major RWA adoption announcement (by BlackRock, Texas Stock Exchange, etc). Yet proprietary L1s are cutting corners with marketing dollars and being able to present a smiling suit to board rooms. For all their talk about disruption, corporates still want the reassurance of a wet ink contract and a neck to grab, and a decentralized network won’t provide that.
I’m aware of Etherealize & the new EF 1T security initiative; but also of Betamax vs VHS.
This is not about price btw — I just worry about a future where lesser solutions (proprietary blockchains / glorified databases with some vague crypto jargon peppered in) prevail over a universal, civilizational ledger
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And I posit that the disconnect comes from the fact that most of the crypto & startup founders crowd has only a superficial understanding of what makes the corporate customers tick.
Their world just doesn’t intersect enough with that of the plush high-rise downtown offices where the MBAs and JDs in suits call the shots on which tech to adopt for large RWA bets.
Just like “nobody ever got fired for buying IBM” in the old days, nobody’s taking a personal and professional risk by embracing a tech with a better ethos over a tech with named investors, customer support, and a physical address. Especially when the tech will underpin trillions of dollars in customer money (i.e., third-party liabilities).
It takes a tremendous amount of patient evangelizing to sway those decision makers, and none of it happens at crypto conference booths handing out swag. VCs and ex-TardFi folks backing proprietary L1s have the advantage of being in familiar territory.
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agree with that take. work with corp clients for 20 years as exec coach so privvy to those vibes and rooms.
apart from TardFi most corporates don't see blockchain coming at all.
It might be a good catchphrase to push:
Nobody's ever got fired
For building on Ethereum.
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I think there’s a good argument to be made that tardfi does care otherwise why do they have most of their assets on L1 today?
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Yes, but the show hasn’t really started yet — 99% RWA tokenization of the opportunity is still ahead.
Background for my cast is Kinexys / JP Morgan just settled its first public transaction of tokenized treasuries, and it was on Ondo, some permissioned alt L1.
They and a handful of others like BlackRock have the power to make or break the future RWA tokenization supremacy of any L1, and yet they haven’t indicated any strong preference for ethos over permissioned alt chains
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John Oswald summed this up perfectly 30 years ago.
The tradfi and C Suite people by and large aren’t forward thinking people. Their mindset is glued to the myopic perception of safe and predictable and will try and squeeze everything into those categories, even if they don’t fit.
"Something that arises at the inception of most media, even before they come about, is this whole utopian drip about it. And the utopianism often wears down under corporate pressure after a while, and it's important if you're going to maintain the politics of it, it can't be sort of drained off. It is beginning to look
