Still, the growing institutional interest has not translated nicely into ETH’s market performance, a disconnect that has frustrated many investors. Raman attributes this gap largely to timing.
“The sales cycle for institutions is particularly long,” he said. “The piping is in place. We just haven’t seen all the assets come on the chain yet.”
He said his view is that Ethereum is currently in a transition phase where the infrastructure has largely been built, but the scale of adoption is not yet fully reflected in the asset itself. As more tokenized assets migrate on-chain, he believes the market will eventually reevaluate ETH’s role as the asset that secures the network.
“When you look at the headlines in retrospect, it will be: The global financial system’s internet moment happened on Ethereum,” he said.
Raman also pushed back on criticism surrounding the Ethereum Foundation, which has faced scrutiny over leadership changes and its evolving role in the ecosystem. He argues that the foundation’s willingness to step down is a feature, not a bug.
“The underpinnings of the financial system cannot have one party controlling it,” he said. “The network is universal. All the pieces are there now. Let’s deliver it.”
Rather than acting as a central coordinator, Raman believes the foundation should focus on maintaining Ethereum’s core values — security, censorship resistance, privacy and open standards — while continuing work on long-term priorities such as zero-knowledge technology and quantum resistance.
