On February 25, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin took to social media to note that decentralized finance (DeFi) is a critical pillar of Ethereum’s core values. Financial empowerment, he said, is a key dimension of achieving autonomy and freedom in today’s world. While finance isn’t Ethereum’s sole purpose, it is vital. The current DeFi landscape has brought the world’s best savings, risk management, and wealth creation opportunities to global users in a permissionless way. The Ethereum Foundation must continue building on this foundation. What made Ethereum’s early DeFi era great was its willingness to dream big, innovate, and build an entirely new paradigm. DeFi’s future will reclaim this spirit — not just aiming to “build a better stablecoin,” but diving deeper into fundamental issues to propose superior solutions. The Foundation’s support for “on-chain finance” (and even DeFi) is not unconditional. It has a clear vision for DeFi: a permissionless, open-source, privacy-first, security-centric global financial system — one that maximizes users’ control over their own assets, minimizes centralization bottlenecks and trusted third parties, and democratizes risk management and wealth accumulation. The Foundation hopes protocols can pass the “exit test”: the system must keep operating even if the founding team suddenly disappears. Achieving this vision will require significant work.
