Institutional Ethereum infrastructure requires three things operating in coordination: payment rails that work at scale, financial instruments that institutions can actually use, and protocol engineering that makes the entire system safe to run in production.

With the addition of Polygon Labs, Ethena, and Nethermind, the EEA now has members building each of these layers and connecting them to enterprise requirements through the Alliance’s working groups, specifications, and coordination framework.

“Ethereum’s institutional stack is being built by the teams in this room. These aren’t companies experimenting with early-stage infrastructure. They’re building the infrastructure institutions will run on. The EEA is where that work gets connected to enterprise requirements without the commercial conflicts that slow everything else down.”

— Redwan Meslem, Executive Director, Enterprise Ethereum Alliance

Polygon Labs: Payment Infrastructure at Institutional Scale

The enterprise case for Polygon is straightforward: in November 2025, Polygon Chain processed more than $7 billion in peer-to-peer stablecoin volume in a single month. That is not a testnet figure or a projection. It is production payment infrastructure operating at a volume that demands institutional-grade reliability, compliance, and settlement.

Polygon Labs recently announced definitive agreements to acquire Coinme and Sequence for more than $250 million, building what it calls the Open Money Stack, an integrated set of services designed to move money instantly and compliantly between traditional financial systems and on-chain rails. The infrastructure already supports major institutional deployments, including BlackRock’s BUIDL fund.

As a member of the EEA, Polygon will contribute to discussions on payments infrastructure, global settlement, merchant access, and the operational standards required for on-chain payments to serve regulated financial institutions.

“Polygon processed more than $7 billion in stablecoin payments in one month. That level of volume reflects real payment infrastructure in use today. Joining the EEA enables us to partner with enterprises on global settlement, merchant access, and compliant rails.”
— Marc Boiron, CEO of Polygon Labs

Ethena: Scaling Onchain-Native Financial Instruments

Ethena’s USDe became the fastest digital dollar asset in history to reach $10 billion in total value locked, achieving that milestone in 500 days. For context, no stablecoin – fiat-backed or otherwise – has reached that scale in that timeframe.

The protocol’s synthetic dollar approach offers an alternative to traditional fiat-backed stablecoins, with applications spanning treasury management and reward strategies. This matters for institutional adoption because it represents a fundamentally different architecture for onchain dollar instruments—one that institutions are actively evaluating as they build treasury and settlement workflows on Ethereum.

Ethena’s membership in the EEA supports its engagement with institutional stakeholders navigating how onchain-native instruments fit into regulated financial workflows.

“USDe reached $10 billion faster than any stablecoin in history because institutions want rewards and transparency. The EEA gives us a seat at the table with the enterprises exploring how onchain-native instruments fit into regulated workflows.”
— Miguel de Sousa, Marketing Lead, Ethena

Nethermind: Securing Ethereum’s Execution Layer

Institutions deploying on Ethereum need to know that the infrastructure they’re running on is secure, performant under load, and prepared for protocol upgrades. That is Nethermind’s domain.

Nethermind is a protocol engineering and research team that builds and maintains execution-layer infrastructure and security tooling used to run Ethereum in production. Their work addresses the institutional requirements that determine whether systems can be deployed safely at scale: performance under load, upgrade readiness, and verifiable security.

This is the layer that most enterprise discussions skip past. Payment rails and financial instruments get the attention. But none of it works without execution-layer infrastructure that meets the reliability standards institutions require. Nethermind brings that depth to the EEA’s technical working groups, helping members move from enterprise requirements to deployments they can actually run.

“Enterprises need implementation partners who understand protocol-level risk, performance constraints, and upgrade reality. Nethermind brings execution engineering and security depth to the EEA, helping members ship reliable Ethereum deployments.”
— Nitin Gaur, Head of Institutional Financial Products, Nethermind

Why These Three Members Matter Together

Each of these organizations joined independently, but the pattern is worth noting.

Polygon is building the payment rails. Ethena is building the financial instruments. Nethermind is securing the protocol infrastructure that both of them run on. Together, they represent three layers of a single institutional stack—and all three are now coordinating through the EEA alongside JP Morgan, Microsoft, EY, Consensys, Chainlink, and the rest of the Alliance’s membership.

This is institutional Ethereum in production. The EEA’s role is to make sure the people building each layer are in the same room, working from shared standards, and connecting to enterprise requirements that are defined collaboratively rather than in isolation.

What Comes Next

Polygon, Ethena, and Nethermind join a membership that includes some of the most significant names in both traditional enterprise and the Ethereum ecosystem. The EEA’s working groups—including the newly launched Privacy Working Group and the Crosschain Interoperability Working Group—provide the forum where these members translate institutional requirements into shared standards and specifications.

If your organization is building institutional infrastructure on Ethereum and wants to be part of this coordination, explore membership at entethalliance.org/become-a-member.