Safeguarding DeFi Infrastructure Builders

Welcome to Crypto Long & Short, our institutional newsletter. This week, we explore the need to safeguard the people driving DeFi innovation. Jennifer Rosenthal, chief communications officer at the DeFi Education Fund, emphasizes the importance of protecting open-source, permissionless, and programmable technology. She highlights high-level policy objectives worth defending, including software developer protections. A recent bipartisan bill, the Promoting Innovation in Blockchain Development Act of 2026, aims to protect software developers from misclassification under criminal code. Meanwhile, Alexis Sirkia, chairman and co-founder of Yellow Network, argues that Ethereum's scaling problem stems from a flawed assumption about throughput, and that state channels offer a more promising solution by enabling peer-to-peer transactions without intermediaries. The newsletter also covers market headlines, including the impact of smart contract exploits and the shift of crypto derivatives volume into regulated venues.