40 million financing, Vitalik Buterin participates, Etherealize aims to be the "spokesperson" for Ethereum.

Author: Eric, Foresight News

Fortune magazine reported on the evening of September 3rd, Beijing time, that Etherealize has completed a $40 million financing round, led by Electric Capital and Paradigm, with participation from Ethereum co-founder Vitalik and the Ethereum Foundation. Electric Capital and Paradigm are known for their generous investments in the Web3 space, especially within the Ethereum ecosystem, and both are key supporters of companies listed on Ethereum DAT. However, it is rare for both Vitalik and the Ethereum Foundation to be involved directly.

Etherealize is quite concise in its self-introduction, referring to itself on its X profile as "an institutional-grade product, BD, and marketing department of the Ethereum ecosystem," while its website only presents its vision of "redefining Wall Street" and "bringing the world into Ethereum by providing research, content, and products." In terms of products, Etherealize targets institutional-grade infrastructure, offering the issuance, management, and settlement of tokenized assets, along with corresponding automated compliance infrastructure, and plans to introduce privacy features through zero-knowledge proofs.

According to Etherealize, it has a well-informed engineering team with a deep understanding of Ethereum, a leadership team with decades of experience in financial institutions, and channels for dialogue with the SEC, the Treasury, and Congress to formulate rules. Western investment institutions have always been willing to bet on large B2B businesses, but the substantial financial investment in such a startup is clearly an act of "investing in people". The author has also found some clues from the composition of the team.

The most outstanding member of the Etherealize team is undoubtedly Danny Ryan, the co-founder who made significant contributions to The Merge and the Ethereum Beacon Chain, but left the Ethereum Foundation team last September. In his farewell letter on Github, Danny Ryan stated that his departure was for personal reasons. Perhaps at that moment he realized that merely nitpicking on the technical aspects could not advance Ethereum further; it is the team that can assist in pushing Ethereum to the world with their technical capabilities that holds the right solution.

In terms of technology, Zash Obront, co-founder and CTO of Etherealize, was a co-founder of Scribe Media, which provided book publishing services. He joined Snowcap Technology as a security researcher in August 2021, a company focused on security, offering services in areas such as AI, VPN, WIFI, and enterprise systems.

The other two founding engineers responsible for the technical aspects are also quite prominent. Alec Charbonneau was previously a product manager at Circle, which successfully went public as the "first stablecoin stock," and later worked as a software engineer at Stellar, which, like Ripple, focuses on settlements. The other engineer, Alex Wilton, has worked as a product manager at Tesla and at Rivian, another electric vehicle company that raised over $10 billion in funding in 2021.

The resume and strategy of the product CEO Jay Katz are closely related. He has held positions in various industries including finance, software, smart hardware, law firms, and consulting companies. LinkedIn information shows that his actual position is CEO of lending market solutions. Working alongside him is credit operations Jennifer Laino, who has extensive experience in the financial industry, having served as an assistant vice president at Lehman Brothers, a vice president at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, and a consultant at Blackstone Group.

Co-founder and CEO Vivek Raman, who has many years of experience in the financial lending sector, previously held senior credit business executive positions at Morgan Stanley, UBS, Deutsche Bank, and Nomura. He joined Celsius as a senior DeFi researcher in September 2021, which faced a crisis during the bear market in 2022. Subsequently, Vivek Raman became the general manager at BitOoda, a digital asset investment bank that completed its Series A funding in early 2023. At BitOoda, he focused on bringing institutions into the Ethereum and L2 ecosystem.

Clearly, the Etherealize plan to "bring Wall Street to Ethereum" initially targets the credit sector. I speculate that its implementation path will involve the introduction of on-chain lending systems combined with stablecoins. Of course, such products differ from DeFi and may only provide solutions for financial institutions.

In terms of market and operations, Etherealize has chosen candidates with more experience in the Web3 field. Marketing Director Valeria Salazar previously served as Marketing Strategy Director and Developer and Ecosystem Relations Director at Phi Labs, while the Business Operations Manager chosen is Morgan Takach, who was the Strategic and Operations Director at Polyhedra.

The description of Etherealize having a team with rich experience in the Web3 and financial fields is not unfounded, and it happens to capture the trend of institutions trying to tokenize assets. The story of reshaping finance with Ethereum is one that has been told since the start of the DeFi Summer. Even as traditional institutions are experimenting with asset blockchain, we still cannot determine how large the market size of this business can be, but building a bridge between Ethereum and Wall Street is itself a direction worth exploring for Ethereum.

In addition to specific business activities, Etherealize also clearly expresses on its official website the desire to act as an "ambassador" for Ethereum, promoting the adoption of Ethereum and the L2 ecosystem worldwide. Overall, Etherealize will take over the "go to market" aspect that the Ethereum Foundation has not handled well, and the specific results are worth looking forward to.