DeFi is not a speculative bet on the future. This is the inevitable evolution of finance, driven by a fundamental truth: financial autonomy is a right, not a privilege. And this has been a key driver of Ethereum’s growth and adoption.
We want to see DeFi thrive, but we have an opinion on what it should look like: permissionless, censorship-resistant, privacy-focused, self-custodian, and open source. We recognize the challenges of fully getting to this point: our role is to champion these principles, support the teams working to implement them, showcase those implementing them, and be clear on how to get there and why it matters.
The Ethereum Foundation believes in Defipunk: not a finance that is slightly better than TradFi, but a finance that could not exist without Ethereum.
The value of DeFi, today and tomorrow
DeFi protocols today give everyone access to savings, credit, risk management and wealth creation tools that most of the world still cannot access: stablecoins that anyone can hold, yield without a private banker, markets that never close and cannot exclude you. It is the center of Ethereum’s campaign for financial sovereignty for all, especially for those who are excluded from traditional finance or trapped in systems that can freeze their assets without warning. These tools already empower millions of individuals and thousands of institutions around the world, and we want to help them become even stronger.
We also want to support DeFi as it will exist tomorrow. This means exploring radical ideas that challenge assumptions about what finance can be. This is not an N+1 financial improvement. This is where concepts like borrowing from smart contracts originated. This is where the first DeFi was born. What if, instead of just creating better stablecoins, we found a combination of user-controlled AI and high-throughput on-chain futures markets to create a fundamentally different and better solution to the underlying problem of hedging against expected future spending? What if we could build the most efficient futarchic DAO in the world? What if we could combine DeFi with our work on ZK reputation and achieve the world’s first implementation of privacy-preserving undercollateralized lending? Or entirely new financial primitives that we haven’t yet imagined.
Both types of DeFi drive Ethereum forward. We want to help builders working across this entire spectrum, and for each individual use case that is currently “Tomorrow’s DeFi”, gradually make its way to becoming part of “Today’s DeFi”, live and mature on the Ethereum mainnet.
Who does this work
“Ethereum is poised to attract exponentially greater flows of capital, talent, and innovative energy. However, growth is often path-dependent: standards adopted in periods of rapid and chaotic growth harden into legacy constraints, and designs that prioritize transparency can lock in surveillance by default. Existing systems often exert subtle pressures that shrink the design space for new DeFi primitives and limit privacy-focused innovation. The Ethereum Foundation will defend against these pressures. – Hsiao-Wei Wang – Co-Executive Director of the Ethereum Foundation
Charles Saint-Louis (DeFi protocol specialist) and ivangbi (DeFi Coordinator) lead EF’s DeFi efforts within the App Relations team. Together, they bring over a decade of experience in the DeFi space.
Charles previously led DELV (formerly Element Finance), pioneer of fixed rate yield protocols and products (2021-2025). Before that, he contributed to the DAI stablecoin system and shaped the governance of MakerDAO, with previous work in the security token space (2018).
Ivan co-founded Gearbox Protocol (2021), a modular lending infrastructure focused on leverage. It has evolved within Ethereum’s DeFi community, from invoking LobsterDAO in 2018 at DeFi Summer to delivering one of the most technically resilient protocols in the ecosystem.
As TradFi and institutional adoption on Ethereum accelerates, we must not forget the fundamentals that built DeFi in the first place. Pragmatism is necessary, but our mission is to evolve cypherpunk values alongside market growth. We see ourselves as the essential link between these two worlds. We are ready to listen and adapt; you know where to find us! – ivangbi
What we focus on
To begin 2026, we are focused on a set of core priorities. There are many other things we want to address, but we believe in starting purposefully and deliberately expanding our activities. What happens next will be shaped by what we learn and what the ecosystem tells us matters most.
Relations with manufacturers — Create clear channels for DeFi teams to connect to the EF and each other: share information about protocol upgrades, communicate application layer needs to core developers, and support teams building on Ethereum.
Security — Support for work that makes DeFi more secure by default. Take a critical look at the points of failure: interfaces, oracles, upgrade mechanisms, admin keys and discretionary multisigs which many protocols still depend on as a transition crutch. Exploits don’t just harm individual protocols; they set back the entire ecosystem. We want to support better auditing practices, runtime protections, and architectures that trend toward lack of trust over time.
Decentralization and openness — Advocacy for open source, composable and verifiable code as a reference. Code that can be read, audited, and built upon is code that can be trusted. Encourage teams to move away from direct control and toward decentralized governance, experimenting with models beyond defaults. Openness is a strength, not a vulnerability.
Confidentiality — Work with EF’s Privacy cluster to support privacy-preserving DeFi. We do not believe in “building a private stablecoin”. We believe in privacy as a core infrastructure: first for payments of all tokens, then for more complex use cases like trading and lending. Privacy should be the default, not a feature you opt into.
Standards and clarity of risks — Push for consistent standards across vaults, tokenization, RWA, and disclosure formats. Support shared risk frameworks that the ecosystem can build on: clear taxonomies, honest assessments of what “low risk” really means, and coordination with portfolios, explorers, and infrastructure teams to reduce friction.
Research and content — Creating and curating serious DeFi content: researching mechanisms, analyzing data, supporting DeFi-focused events, and accessible explanations that help people understand what’s going on in DeFi and how to use it.
We will share concrete results throughout the year. Frameworks, research, events and more as this work grows.
On the horizon
Some areas we are monitoring closely: DeFi × AI, institutional adoption of DeFi, stablecoins and paymentsAnd new financial primitives which do not fit perfectly into existing categories. We’re preparing content and thinking about what meaningful support in these areas could look like. More to come.
Connect with us
The App Relations team will be at Digital Asset Summit (March 24-26) and EthCC (March 30-April 2) speaking about these efforts. If you are building DeFi on Ethereum and will be attending either event, come find us.
How to contact us:
Looking for a different path?
For a complete view of EF teams, view our organization chart.
The Ethereum Foundation exists to support the long-term success of Ethereum. DeFi is at the heart of this mission. We’re here to ensure DeFi builders have the coordination, visibility, and connectivity they need to continue advancing open finance.
All roads lead to Ethereum.
Learn about other EF initiatives: Privacy Commitment · Protocol · Ecosystem Support Program
