AEE welcomes Polygon Labs, Ethena and Nethermind

Ethereum’s institutional infrastructure requires three elements working in coordination: payment rails that operate at scale, financial instruments that institutions can actually use, and protocol engineering that ensures the security of the entire system 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 business requirements through the Alliance’s working groups, specifications, and coordination framework.

“The Ethereum institutional stack is built by the teams in this room. These are not companies experimenting with early-stage infrastructure. They are building the infrastructure that institutions will run on. The EEA is where that work is connected to business requirements without the business conflicts that slow down everything else.”

— Redwan Meslem, Executive Director, Enterprise Ethereum Alliance

Polygon’s business case is simple: As of November 2025, Polygon Chain processed over $7 billion in peer-to-peer stablecoin volume in a single month. This is not a testnet number or a projection. It is a production payments infrastructure operating at a volume that demands institutional-level reliability, compliance and settlement.

Polygon Labs recently announced definitive agreements to acquire Coinme and Sequence for more than $250 million, creating what it calls 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 operational standards required for on-chain payments to serve regulated financial institutions.

“Polygon processed over $7 billion in stablecoin payments in one month. This level of volume reflects the real payments infrastructure in use today. Joining the EEA allows us to collaborate with businesses on global settlement, merchant access, and compliant rails.”
— Marc Boiron, CEO of Polygon Labs

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

The protocol’s synthetic dollar approach offers an alternative to traditional stablecoins backed by fiat currencies, with applications spanning treasury management and reward strategies. This is important for institutional adoption because it represents a fundamentally different architecture for on-chain dollar instruments – one that institutions are actively evaluating when creating cash and settlement flows on Ethereum.

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

“USDe has reached $10 billion faster than any stablecoin in history because institutions want rewards and transparency. AEE gives us a seat at the table with companies to explore how native on-chain instruments fit into regulated workflows.”
— Miguel de Sousa, marketing manager, Ethena

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

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

This is the layer that most business discussions ignore. Payment rails and financial instruments are getting attention. But none of this works without a runtime layer infrastructure that meets the reliability standards required by institutions. Nethermind brings this depth to AEE technical working groups, helping members move from business requirements to deployments they can actually execute.

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

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

Polygon builds the payment rails. Ethena builds the financial instruments. Nethermind secures the protocol infrastructure on which both operate. Together, they represent three tiers of a single institutional stack, and all three now coordinate through the EEA alongside JP Morgan, Microsoft, EY, Consensys, Chainlink and the rest of the Alliance members.

This is institutional Ethereum in production. The role of the AEE is to ensure that the people building each layer are in the same room, working from shared standards, and connecting to business requirements defined collaboratively rather than in isolation.

Polygon, Ethena, and Nethermind join a membership that includes some of the most important names in mainstream enterprise and the Ethereum ecosystem. The EEA Working Groups, including the new 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 would like to be part of this coordination, explore membership at entethalliance.org/become-a-member.