Ethereum Foundation Establishes DeFi Team, Explicitly Endorses 'Defipunk' Philosophy

BlockBeats News, February 24th, the Ethereum Foundation announced the establishment of a dedicated DeFi unit under its App Relations team to support next-generation protocol development, and explicitly stated "Believe in Defipunk."

In this appointment, former DELV CEO and MakerDAO Governance Architect Charles St. Louis was appointed as DeFi Protocol Specialist, and Gearbox Protocol co-founder Ivan (ivangbi) as DeFi Coordinator. This team will be part of the Ecosystem Acceleration system, led by Jason Chaskin.

The Foundation stated that the DeFi it seeks to promote should have characteristics such as "permissionless, censorship-resistant, privacy-first, self-custodial, open-source," rather than just being an improvement on Traditional Finance (TradFi). Charles St. Louis stated on social media that Defipunk represents "the financial form that cannot exist without Ethereum."

According to the announcement, the new team will not only support existing DeFi projects but also focus on cutting-edge directions, including user-owned AI, high-throughput on-chain futures markets, futarchy DAOs, and ZK-based privacy-preserving, low-collateral lending. At the same time, the team will collaborate with the Foundation's privacy department to establish clearer communication channels, strengthen protocol security, and application design research.

This move is part of the Ethereum Foundation's further optimization of resource allocation and strengthening of ecosystem strategy communication following last year's organizational restructuring.