AC: Nowadays, many DeFi projects are "no longer DeFi," and the industry is debating whether circuit breakers should be introduced.

BlockBeats News, April 29 — Andre Cronje stated in an interview with Cointelegraph that many DeFi protocols are no longer “true DeFi” in the real sense, but rather resemble “profit-driven companies operated by teams,” because they generally rely on upgradeable contracts, multi-signature wallets, off-chain infrastructure, and manual operational control.

Cronje pointed out that the industry still overemphasizes smart contract audits while neglecting operational risks closer to traditional finance (TradFi). He believes that recent attacks are not caused by code vulnerabilities but stem from off-chain infrastructure, permission management, and social engineering attacks.

The discussion was prompted by recent frequent DeFi security incidents. In April, protocols such as Flying Tulip, Drift Protocol, and Kelp experienced security breaches, with Drift and Kelp losing approximately $280 million and $293 million, respectively.

In response, Flying Tulip has added a “Withdrawal Circuit Breaker” mechanism, which can delay or queue withdrawal requests when large abnormal withdrawals occur, giving the team about six hours to respond. Cronje emphasized that this mechanism does not permanently freeze withdrawals but serves as an additional layer of security.

However, Michael Egorov remains cautious. He stated that the circuit breaker itself could become a new centralization risk point. If control permissions fall into the hands of attackers, the mechanism meant to protect the protocol could instead be used to freeze assets or directly transfer funds.

Egorov believes that the long-term direction of DeFi should be to minimize human intervention and centralized permissions as much as possible, rather than adding more layers of manual control. “The security of DeFi comes from decentralization, not from more human management.”