Aave’s Stani Kulechov Criticizes EU Proposals to Restrict DeFi Access

The substance here is less the objection than the mechanism: the proposals would move DeFi access from a permissionless default to a gatekept one, with suitability tests and protocol certification doing the gatekeeping. That shifts the compliance burden onto crypto asset service providers, the entities MiCA already licenses, effectively making them the chokepoint for user access rather than the protocols themselves. Kulechov's liquidity and network-effects argument is the familiar one: fragmented, curated access erodes the composability that gives DeFi its scale. Whether certification arrives without an enforcement framework, or European users simply route around licensed venues, is the open question.