Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, said that decentralized finance (DeFi) has become safer as regulatory and contract risks have improved, in some cases surpassing traditional finance. The statement was made on the social media platform X.
“Low-risk defi used to be constrained by regulatory barriers and smart contract safety risks. Both problems have greatly improved,” said Buterin. “For many people worldwide, defi today is in some cases already safer than tradfi.”
In 2025, DeFi adoption and security benefited from both regulatory clarity and technical improvements. According to Grayscale’s August 2025 commentary, Ethereum’s EIP-4844 (proto-danksharding) reduced rollup fees while policymakers advanced frameworks to support stablecoins, tokenization, and decentralized finance. These changes are helping DeFi scale more securely and attract institutional participation.
Losses in DeFi remain significant but proportionate to Ethereum’s overall market size. CoinDesk reported that about $2.5 billion was lost to hacks and scams in the first half of 2025, while DeFi’s total value locked rebounded to $170 billion, with Ethereum accounting for roughly 59% of that figure. This places losses near 2.5% of Ethereum’s $100 billion total value locked share.
Crypto thefts in 2025 continue to be severe compared to traditional finance. Chainalysis reported $2.17 billion stolen by mid-year, led by the Bybit hack. In contrast, UK Finance data cited by the Financial Times showed £1.17 billion lost to consumer fraud in traditional banking in 2024. These figures highlight that security risks persist across both DeFi and traditional finance systems.
Vitalik Buterin is a Canadian programmer and co-founder of Ethereum who published the Ethereum whitepaper in 2013 after co-founding Bitcoin Magazine in 2011. According to Wikipedia, he launched Ethereum in 2015 with other developers and has since become a leading voice in blockchain, focusing on scaling solutions such as rollups and public-goods funding.
Ethereum, launched in July 2015, is a decentralized blockchain designed for smart contracts and decentralized applications. According to Ethereum.org, its mission is to enable an open, user-owned internet where value and applications can operate without centralized gatekeepers. Today, it powers much of DeFi, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), and thousands of decentralized apps worldwide.
