Central banks love control. That’s why every country rushing to build a CBDC is trying to design it on their own closed system. But here’s the catch — money doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It needs interoperability, liquidity, and trust. And right now, the only place that truly exists at scale is Ethereum.
Stablecoins have already proven it. USDT, USDC, DAI, billions in daily volume, most of it running through Ethereum and its L2s. That’s not theory, that’s reality. The network effects are already baked in, and governments can’t just wish that away. Ethereum works because it’s neutral. It doesn’t belong to the US, China, or any corporation. If a CBDC launched on a chain fully owned by one country, others wouldn’t touch it. That’s exactly why Ethereum stands out: it’s public, it’s global, and no single government can pull the plug. That neutrality is the hardest thing to replicate.
Scalability used to be the biggest critique. For years, people laughed at Ethereum’s congestion and high gas fees. But that narrative doesn’t hold anymore. Rollups like Arbitrum and Optimism, plus zk tech from Starknet and zkSync, have transformed Ethereum into something that can handle millions of transactions without breaking. The base layer provides security, and the rollups provide speed. In other words, the infrastructure problem is basically solved. But here’s where it gets tricky: governments hate losing control. Putting a CBDC on Ethereum means giving up the ability to dictate every single rule of the system. That’s why most are experimenting with private chains or closed databases. The problem is, if they stay isolated, those CBDCs won’t have real utility beyond their borders. They’ll function like glorified digital versions of cash, not as global money.
And that’s the fork in the road. If CBDCs want to be more than just a domestic tool, they need to connect with the broader digital economy. That digital economy already runs on Ethereum and its rollups. Stablecoins have set the standard for what “digital dollars” look like, and CBDCs can’t afford to ignore that. So the way I see it, CBDCs will resist for as long as they can. But eventually, the pressure of interoperability and global settlement will force them to plug into the very system they wanted to avoid. Whether they like it or not, Ethereum has become the settlement layer of the internet.
The irony is clear, central banks are building CBDCs to have more control, but the only way those CBDCs will work globally is by relying on a system they don’t control.
