Safeguarding DeFi Infrastructure Builders

Welcome to Crypto Long & Short, our institutional newsletter. This week, we focus on the need to safeguard the individuals building DeFi infrastructure. As traditional finance companies increasingly adopt DeFi technologies, it is crucial to protect the open-source, permissionless, and programmable nature of these innovations. The DeFi Education Fund, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization, invites you to join us in defending the policy principles that make DeFi valuable. Key objectives include protecting software developers from misclassification under criminal code and promoting legislative clarity. For instance, the Promoting Innovation in Blockchain Development Act aims to provide legal certainty for software developers who do not control customer assets. Meanwhile, Ethereum's L2 strategy is facing challenges due to a fundamental design flaw, as rollups are fragmenting the network instead of scaling it. By contrast, state channels offer a more promising approach, enabling peer-to-peer transactions without intermediaries. As the crypto landscape continues to evolve, it is essential to support initiatives that foster clarity, reduce uncertainty, and enable responsible participation in both centralized and decentralized markets.