Wall Street's Blockchain Enthusiasm May Be Doomed to Fail

Traditional Wall Street financial institutions have been making headlines with their latest forays into blockchain technology. In recent announcements, DTCC has partnered with JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley to pilot tokenized stocks, while the London Stock Exchange plans to launch 24-hour stock trading based on blockchain within the year.

The 'blockchain' being referred to by these institutions is actually a permissioned network, such as DTCC's Hyperledger Besu network or Canton Network. These networks are fundamentally different from decentralized, immutable, and permissionless public blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Omid Malekan, adjunct professor at Columbia Business School, believes that the current enthusiasm for permissioned blockchains is doomed to fail. According to him, any permissioned chain will favor the interests of certain enterprises and struggle to achieve broad adoption in the long term.