The Cari announcement sparked a debate about institutional blockchain infrastructure. Much of it focuses on technical architecture. But first, consider the business case of proprietary vs. open standard. Governance of proprietary networks like Canton or Tempo is going to be controlled by a small group with disproportionate voting weight. It's "permissionless", but to join you have to submit a Google Form with opaque admission criteria. It's unclear who decides. Over time, the most influential participants will set the terms of access and pricing. If you're a bank evaluating this today, you recognize the pattern from SWIFT and Visa: early incumbents locking in structural advantages while late joiners absorb the cost. This is what we hear from banks. Everyone wants to build their own SWIFT-killer. Nobody wants join someone else's SWIFT-killer. Ethereum is the only settlement layer where that dynamic can't take hold, because no single entity can capture it. It's the only place where every participant can permanently trust that no future coalition will rewrite the rules against them. That's what makes Ethereum the only game-theoretical equilibrium as a global settlement layer for institutional finance that works long term.