Safeguarding DeFi Infrastructure Builders

Welcome to Crypto Long & Short, our institutional newsletter. This week, we focus on the need to safeguard the people behind DeFi infrastructure. Jennifer Rosenthal, chief communications officer at the DeFi Education Fund, highlights the growing trend of traditional finance companies embracing DeFi technology. She emphasizes the importance of protecting the technology and infrastructure that make DeFi valuable, particularly through high-level policy objectives. Rosenthal notes that software developer protections have become a topic of discussion in recent market structure and crypto policy talks, with a majority of industry participants agreeing on the need to protect DeFi builders. The Promoting Innovation in Blockchain Development Act of 2026, introduced by Representatives Scott Fitzgerald, Ben Cline, and Zoe Lofgren, aims to protect software developers from misclassification under criminal code. Meanwhile, Alexis Sirkia, chairman and co-founder of Yellow Network, comments on Ethereum's scaling problem, arguing that the rollup model was flawed from the start. Sirkia suggests that state channels, which enable peer-to-peer transactions off-chain, could be a more effective solution. The newsletter also features a chart of the week, highlighting Aave's market share slide after the rsETH exploit, and provides a summary of the week's headlines.