Following recent DeFi exploits, discussions around circuit breakers have made the news.
A very recent report that caught my attention is this one from Cointelegraph:
Andre Cronje says much of decentralized finance is “no longer DeFi” in the strict sense, as builders debate whether circuit breakers and other emergency controls are now necessary to protect users from exploits.
The Flying Tulip founder told Cointelegraph in an interview that many protocols are no longer immutable public goods, but rather “teams running for-profit businesses” with upgradeable contracts, offchain infrastructure and operational controls.
That shift changes the security model, he said. While early DeFi protocols were mostly defined by immutable smart contracts, newer systems often depend on proxy upgrades, multisigs, infrastructure providers, admin processes and human response teams, according to Cronje. — Source
For those who don't know, circuit breakers, when it comes to DeFi are automated emergency brakes built into blockchain protocols that trigger protective actions during extreme market conditions. Just like a circuit breaker in a home prevents electrical fires, DeFi circuit breakers detect extreme price movements or unusual trading patterns and automatically pause operations to prevent catastrophic damage.
Generally, the circuit breakers introduce a human-in-the-loop mechanism to supposedly decentralized protocols.
The rise of Hybrids
We are going to see a lot of "hybrid DeFi" over the next couple years and all of them will be selling the idea of security and compliance.
What these hybrids will be in real sense will be controlled on-chain finance, branded as secure DeFi with compliance.
It will begin with discussions like circuit breakers. The fact that people are even discussing this shows that hybrids are inevitable.
To be clear, DeFi doesn't need circuit breakers. It doesn't need anything that introduces human control.
Permissionless, immutable, autonomous, that's what DeFi is. Circuit breakers do not make DeFi secure, quite the contrary.
Security needs to be designed around decentralized executions. If what we consider DeFi has to have a layer to fight exploits, it must be within decentralized designs, not something that a small group of friends will control, that's just an introduction of new risks, not security.
When we look closely at the implementations, we find that multisig is the ultimate defense, which is where the small circle of "friends" come but what's really expected of an industry that's allowed entire blockchains to be built and heavily funded with this very design.
Real DeFi needs to remain without any systems that introduces humans into the process of transactions, the whole point of the ecosystem was to remove intermediaries and ensure that everything was enforced by network consensus.
Security has to be based on the same consensus, otherwise we lose the vision.