"We've long since moved on from DeFi," Cronje told Cointelegraph. "Because your intermediary now is a company, it's a decision maker, it's a curator, it's a risk committee — it's all the traditional kind of things we saw in banking" .

What Happened: DeFi Became 'Onchain Finance'

Cronje argues that most protocols have evolved into "onchain finance" or "open finance" — essentially traditional financial structures running on blockchain rails. Today's intermediaries, he explains, have taken the form of corporations that assume roles traditionally held by banks: decision-makers, curators, and risk committees .

True DeFi, he maintains, still exists in small, niche projects where genuine innovation continues. But the broader ecosystem has shifted. Cronje noted that the move toward upgradeable contracts, multi-sig permissions, and off-chain infrastructure has turned protocols from "immutable public goods" into "operable for-profit businesses" .

Evidence of Sector Contraction: TVL More Than Halved

To underscore his point, Cronje pointed to DefiLlama data showing that total value locked (TVL) in DeFi more than halved over the prior 10 months — dropping from $167 billion in early October 2025 to roughly $75 billion at the time of his remarks . That represents a decline of approximately 55% .

Regulatory Spotlight: ECB Questions DAO Decentralization

Cronje also highlighted a March 2026 European Central Bank working paper that examined four prominent protocols: Aave, MakerDAO, Ampleforth, and Uniswap. The ECB found that the top 100 governance token holders controlled more than 80% of the supply in each protocol, based on snapshot data from November 2022 and May 2023 .

The paper questioned whether DAOs are sufficiently decentralized to remain outside the EU's Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) as "fully decentralized" services. If regulators decide they are not, these protocols could face compliance obligations similar to traditional financial firms .

The Design Tension: Circuit Breakers vs. Immutability

Cronje raised a contentious design challenge: should protocols introduce circuit breakers and other emergency controls to protect users from exploits? He has argued that circuit breakers can give teams time to respond during abnormal outflows, potentially preventing catastrophic losses .

But the proposal has sparked sharp disagreement. Curve's Michael Egorov warned that circuit breakers may introduce new human vulnerabilities — the same kind of single-point-of-failure risk that DeFi was originally designed to eliminate .

Cronje frames this as an unavoidable tension. The industry, he says, is still overly focused on smart contract audits while neglecting operational risks that arise when protocols rely on upgradeable contracts, multi-sig permissions, and manual processes . In his view, recent major exploits — including attacks in the $280 million and $293 million range — demonstrate that risk has expanded from pure smart contract bugs to "Web2-style" infrastructure and social engineering threats .

The Takeaway

Cronje's message is not that blockchain-based finance has failed, but that the industry needs to be honest about what it has become. He suggests that calling today's protocols "DeFi" is misleading when they depend on centralized intermediaries, upgradeable code, and off-chain decision-making. The term "onchain finance" more accurately describes the current reality — and that reality comes with different risks, different regulatory scrutiny, and different design trade-offs that builders can no longer ignore.

"We've long since moved on from DeFi," Cronje told Cointelegraph. "Because your intermediary now is a company, it's a decision maker, it's a curator, it's a risk committee — it's all the traditional kind of things we saw in banking" .

What Happened: DeFi Became 'Onchain Finance'

Cronje argues that most protocols have evolved into "onchain finance" or "open finance" — essentially traditional financial structures running on blockchain rails. Today's intermediaries, he explains, have taken the form of corporations that assume roles traditionally held by banks: decision-makers, curators, and risk committees .

True DeFi, he maintains, still exists in small, niche projects where genuine innovation continues. But the broader ecosystem has shifted. Cronje noted that the move toward upgradeable contracts, multi-sig permissions, and off-chain infrastructure has turned protocols from "immutable public goods" into "operable for-profit businesses" .

Evidence of Sector Contraction: TVL More Than Halved

To underscore his point, Cronje pointed to DefiLlama data showing that total value locked (TVL) in DeFi more than halved over the prior 10 months — dropping from $167 billion in early October 2025 to roughly $75 billion at the time of his remarks . That represents a decline of approximately 55% .

Regulatory Spotlight: ECB Questions DAO Decentralization

Cronje also highlighted a March 2026 European Central Bank working paper that examined four prominent protocols: Aave, MakerDAO, Ampleforth, and Uniswap. The ECB found that the top 100 governance token holders controlled more than 80% of the supply in each protocol, based on snapshot data from November 2022 and May 2023 .

The paper questioned whether DAOs are sufficiently decentralized to remain outside the EU's Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) as "fully decentralized" services. If regulators decide they are not, these protocols could face compliance obligations similar to traditional financial firms .

The Design Tension: Circuit Breakers vs. Immutability

Cronje raised a contentious design challenge: should protocols introduce circuit breakers and other emergency controls to protect users from exploits? He has argued that circuit breakers can give teams time to respond during abnormal outflows, potentially preventing catastrophic losses .

But the proposal has sparked sharp disagreement. Curve's Michael Egorov warned that circuit breakers may introduce new human vulnerabilities — the same kind of single-point-of-failure risk that DeFi was originally designed to eliminate .

Cronje frames this as an unavoidable tension. The industry, he says, is still overly focused on smart contract audits while neglecting operational risks that arise when protocols rely on upgradeable contracts, multi-sig permissions, and manual processes . In his view, recent major exploits — including attacks in the $280 million and $293 million range — demonstrate that risk has expanded from pure smart contract bugs to "Web2-style" infrastructure and social engineering threats .

The Takeaway

Cronje's message is not that blockchain-based finance has failed, but that the industry needs to be honest about what it has become. He suggests that calling today's protocols "DeFi" is misleading when they depend on centralized intermediaries, upgradeable code, and off-chain decision-making. The term "onchain finance" more accurately describes the current reality — and that reality comes with different risks, different regulatory scrutiny, and different design trade-offs that builders can no longer ignore.