Key Takeaways
-
Vitalik Buterin says the Ethereum Foundation (EF) will not support DeFi “indiscriminately.”
-
EF wants protocols that pass the “walkaway test,” meaning they keep working even if founding teams vanish or turn hostile.
-
EF’s Feb. 23 DeFi roadmap focuses on security, privacy infrastructure, standards, risk clarity, and tighter builder coordination.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said decentralized finance (DeFi) must move beyond broad “on-chain finance” branding.
Instead, Buterin wants to focus on building protocols that are secure, privacy-preserving and resilient even without their founding teams.
In a Feb. 24 post on X, Buterin said DeFi is “a central part of the value that Ethereum provides.”
However, he argued the Ethereum Foundation (EF) is “not interested in supporting ‘on-chain finance’ or even ‘DeFi’ indiscriminately.”
Instead, he outlined a specific target: permissionless, open-source, private, security-first global finance that maximizes user control over assets and minimizes centralized chokepoints and trusted third parties.
A key benchmark, he added, is whether protocols pass the “walkaway test”: continuing to function even if the original team disappears, becomes hostile, or is compromised.
Buterin framed DeFi as part of Ethereum’s “agency and freedom” thesis.
Permissionless access to savings, risk management and wealth-building opportunities worldwide.
He said the early DeFi era mattered because it invented new primitives, pointing to automated market makers (AMMs).
Buterin argued the next era should recover that ambition.
He urged builders to go deeper than incremental product iterations like “make a better stablecoin,” focusing instead on underlying problems such as risk management and hedging future expenses.
The walkaway test is a practical decentralization filter.
If a protocol depends on a small group of insiders to keep it alive — or relies on privileged controls that could be abused — it may not meet EF’s vision for global finance.
EF’s DeFi statement, published Feb. 23, points to admin keys, upgrade mechanisms, oracles and interfaces as common risk points.
It argues protocols should “trend toward trustlessness” by reducing discretionary control and minimizing off-chain chokepoints.
Buterin described DeFi as a “complex toolchain” spanning on-chain components and user-side off-chain elements such as wallets and local agents.
He said priorities include audits, standards and wallet safeguards, alongside newer approaches such as AI-assisted formal verification and user-side agents that act as guardrails.