Institutions favor permissioned blockchains for the security of a counterparty. But that counterparty can unilaterally change terms. Open networks distribute this risk, and Franklin Templeton's BENJI shows institutions can operate on public networks successfully.
Open networks lack a single counterparty to call for support, but institutions are misguided to view this as a bug. Permissioned blockchains offer vendor accountability but also vendor risk: repricing, data lock-in, restricted exit. The early internet ran on protocols no one owned. Stellar operates the same way. Franklin Templeton's BENJI, a registered money market fund, has run on public Stellar since 2021 under SEC supervision with zero issues. The barrier to institutional adoption isn't risk tolerance; it's a capability problem. Institutions have well-established vendor risk management (procurement, master agreements, lawyers). They lack comparable infrastructure for protocol risk (key operations, validator participation, governance). Building those capabilities is the real work.
