Welcome to Crypto Long & Short, our institutional newsletter. This week, we focus on the need to safeguard the people building DeFi infrastructure. Jennifer Rosenthal, chief communications officer at the DeFi Education Fund, emphasizes the importance of protecting these individuals.
Meanwhile, Alexis Sirkia, chairman and co-founder of Yellow Network, comments on the flaws in Ethereum's L2 strategy. Rosenthal highlights the growing understanding of the benefits of open-source, permissionless, programmable, noncustodial, globally accessible, and interoperable technology in the financial system. She also discusses the introduction of the bipartisan Promoting Innovation in Blockchain Development Act of 2026, which aims to protect software developers from misclassification under criminal code.
Sirkia argues that Ethereum's scaling problem was never about throughput, but rather about how value moves between participants. He believes that the rollup model was designed around the wrong assumption and that state channels are a better solution, allowing participants to transact peer-to-peer off-chain. The newsletter also features headlines of the week, including the impact of smart contract exploits on the market, and a chart showing Aave's market share slide after the rsETH exploit.