The DeFi Collective Enters Turtle Mode

The DeFi Collective is entering a new phase. After a period of ambitious expansion, we are deliberately re-grounding the association: reducing our expenses, focusing our resources, and rebuilding our treasury surplus. We call this turtle mode — a period of patience and consolidation.

This is a restructuring, not a termination. The vision that motivates the Collective is unchanged. What changes today is our posture: for the coming months, our priority is simple and honest — to secure the foundation the Collective stands on.

Why turtle mode

Turtle mode is a response to a clear financial reality.

Over roughly two years, the Collective built and actively developed DeFiScan, its most visible initiative. It was also its most expensive: we invested north of $300,000 into DeFiScan over that period, funded largely by the revenues our own DeFi and treasury activities generated. For a lean non-profit, that is an enormous commitment — one the treasury could carry while markets were favourable, but not indefinitely.

As market conditions turned and several revenue-generating positions became less efficient — the context behind our PermaLP unwind — our cost base outgrew what the treasury could sustainably support. Continuing on the same footing would have put the association’s survival at risk. So we chose to act while we still had the room to do it deliberately, rather than under duress.

What “turtle mode” means

Concretely, we have:

• Massively reduced expenses across the board.
• Reduced the team. We have parted ways with two contributors, Stengarl and Marc, and one board member, Nils. These were difficult decisions involving people who gave a great deal to the Collective. We are grateful for their work and wish them well.
• Refocused on rebuilding a healthy treasury surplus, over a horizon of at least the next six months.

The goal, plainly, is to survive well: to rebuild, stay disciplined, and be patient.

Public-good activities on hold

The Collective has always dedicated resources to public-good work for the wider DeFi ecosystem. In the current state, we can no longer afford to carry these activities, so they are being wound down for now.

This is a pause, not an ending. Once the treasury is on solid ground — which we expect to assess toward the end of the year — we will revisit which of these activities to resume, and how.

DeFiScan

After two years of active development, we are discontinuing our work on DeFiScan. It was the Collective’s flagship, and also its single largest recurring cost — precisely the kind of commitment turtle mode cannot sustain.

DeFiScan remains an open, public project. Its framework and code are available for anyone in the community who wishes to take it forward, and we would be glad to see it continue in other hands.

Public reporting is changing

Transparency has always been central to how the Collective operates, and it remains a value we hold. What changes is the cadence, for two reasons.

First and foremost, our treasury is now managed far more passively. With little active, week-to-week position management, a month rarely brings enough meaningful change to warrant a full report — monthly granularity simply makes less sense for how the Collective now operates. Producing those detailed monthly reports is also a recurring effort that turtle mode is better off sparing.

We are therefore moving from monthly reporting to biannual reporting — a public treasury report twice a year, beginning with our H1 2026 report. Our Treasury Management Policy is unchanged, our operations remain fully on-chain and auditable at any time, and we will continue to report publicly — just less frequently, and in a more consolidated form.

What stays

Some things do not change:

• The association endures. The DeFi Collective remains a Swiss non-profit, governed by its members and board.
• Treasury discipline continues. The same framework that has guided us since day one is what makes a measured re-grounding possible, rather than a disorderly one.
• The vision is intact. We still believe key financial infrastructure should be delivered through secure, transparent, and inclusive decentralized protocols.

The road ahead

For now, the goal is to rebuild, stay disciplined, and be patient. We will reassess our footing toward the end of the year and share how the Collective evolves from there.

To the communities, contributors, and partners who have walked with us so far — thank you. The Ants are not going anywhere. We are just moving at a turtle’s pace for a while.