A coalition of seven major Ethereum protocols has come together to launch the Ethereum Protocol Advocacy Alliance (EPAA) a global initiative designed to safeguard decentralization, promote user self-custody, and advocate for policy frameworks that protect permissionless innovation.
The founding members include Aave Labs, Aragon, Curve, Lido Labs Foundation, The Graph Foundation, Spark Foundation, and Uniswap Foundation, representing a collective that secures more than $100 billion in on-chain assets.
Protecting Ethereum’s core principles
According to the alliance’s announcement shared with Cryptonews, the EPAA aims to ensure that regulatory frameworks reflect the realities of on-chain protocols rather than impose legacy-style financial rules on decentralized systems.
Decentralization is the foundation of Ethereum’s credibility and resilience,” said Sam Kim, Chief Legal Officer at Lido Labs Foundation. “Through the EPAA, we’re making sure policymakers recognize and preserve this principle as essential to the network’s trust and security.
The alliance arrives amid surging public participation in crypto markets. A Strategy & PwC Crypto Survey (2025) found that retail investors now allocate between 5% and 20% of their portfolios to digital assets highlighting both the growing adoption and the need for clear, workable regulations.
Ensuring realistic and balanced regulation
Protocol builders argue that existing policy discussions often overlook how decentralized infrastructure functions in practice.
Public sentiment also leans toward autonomy. A DeFi Education Fund–Ipsos poll found that 56% of Americans support self-custody, with most agreeing individuals should be able to transact digitally without intermediaries.
Collaborative, global approach
The EPAA will work alongside aligned advocacy groups, including the DeFi Education Fund, Decentralization Research Center, and European Crypto Initiative, to strengthen technical insight in policy dialogues.
This alliance ensures that the people who build decentralized systems also shape the policies that define them, Executive Director of the Decentralization Research Center.
The EPAA’s mission rests on four guiding principles:
- Protecting protocol code neutrality from regulatory overreach.
- Using transparency as a compliance tool rather than a burden.
- Safeguarding innovation by avoiding restrictive or one-size-fits-all rules.
- Maintaining global, permissionless access to DeFi infrastructure.
Operating without a fixed hierarchy or budget, the EPAA positions itself as a flexible, coalition-based effort uniting Ethereum’s most influential builders under one policy voice.