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The Ethereum Foundation (EF) has appointed Charles St. Louis, former leader of DELV, previously Element Finance, and contributor to the DAI stablecoin system, as DeFi Protocol Specialist. The foundation also announced Ivan “ivangbi”, co-founder of Gearbox Protocol, as DeFi Coordinator within its App Relations team.
This marks the EF’s first formalized DeFi strategy, announced on February 23, 2026, which defines its support for projects that “couldn’t exist without Ethereum”, those that are permissionless, censorship-resistant, privacy-first, self-custodial, and open-source.
The EF’s opinionated stance on “Defipunk” principles positions DeFi as the evolution of finance, driven by financial autonomy as a fundamental right, rather than incremental improvements over TradFi. The strategy outlines six priority tracks for 2026:
This announcement comes as US regulatory tailwinds gain strength, with the GENIUS Act progressing on stablecoin oversight, paving clearer pathways for compliant issuance. The market structure bill, despite the incessant snags and drawbacks, also seems to be advancing toward Senate committee votes, and could potentially clarify the regulatory boundaries between the SEC and CFTC for digital assets.
The EF’s own criteria serve as a deliberate differentiator. It separates pure DeFi built on Ethereum’s decentralized foundations, emphasizing open-source code that can be audited and built upon, and permissionless access that can’t exclude users, offers privacy by default rather than opt-in, and self-custodial models that avoid reliance on intermediaries.
It also contrasts with institutional stablecoins and TradFi wrappers, which may prioritize regulatory compliance through permissioned access, centralized governance, or surveillance-friendly transparency, potentially complicating into legacy constraints as noted by EF Co-Executive Director Hsiao-Wei Wang.
What I find so interesting about this is that $ETH consistently has 55-60% of all DeFi TVL throughout the last 4 years.
Other chains are fighting for a bit of market share, launching campaigns, but the TVL always ends up being redistributed again.$SOL and $BTC are the only… pic.twitter.com/hwYPaDlCRt
— Quinten | 048.eth (@QuintenFrancois) February 24, 2026
By advocating for these principles, the EF positions Ethereum as the compliant yet uncompromising layer for native DeFi, capable of scaling cypherpunk values alongside growing market adoption from institutions like BlackRock and Goldman Sachs, who have respectively deepened their crypto involvement through ETFs and custody services.
The announcement also highlights DeFi’s current value in providing global access to savings, lending, risk management, and wealth-building tools, such as stablecoins and yield opportunities, that empower the unbanked or those in unstable financial systems, with tools that already serve millions of individuals and thousands of institutions.
Looking ahead, the EF aims to support radical innovations that challenge financial assumptions, such as combining user-controlled AI with high-throughput onchain futures for hedging expenses, building effective futarchy DAOs, or implementing privacy-preserving undercollateralized lending via ZK reputation.
1/ Today the EF is sharing a bit more about how it's approaching DeFi going forward:
— charles (csl) ᛋ (@CharlieStLouis) February 23, 2026
On the horizon, the EF is monitoring DeFi intersections with AI, institutional adoption, stablecoins and payments, and entirely new primitives that don’t fit existing categories, preparing content and support to guide these from conceptual to mainnet maturity. This is the perfect picture of structural alignment with regulatory tailwinds, and could potentially safeguard DeFi’s innovative edge as the sector matures. It’s definitely one to monitor closely in the months ahead.
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