DeFi Education Fund

On June 12, 2021, the Harvard Law Blockchain & Fintech Initiative posted Governance Proposal 005 on the Uniswap governance forum, proposing to allocate one million UNI to create and fund the DeFi Education Fund, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit that would make grants “for political, educational, and legal engagement,” including challenging regulatory, legal and political threats to decentralized finance.⁠[1]

The funds were held in a 4-of-7 multisig controlled by seven committee members: Larry Sukernik, Rebecca Rettig, Jake Chervinsky, Marc Boiron, Katie Biber, Sheila Warren and Marvin Ammori.⁠[1]

Uniswap DAO members passed the proposal on June 29, 2021, with nearly 80 million votes in favor and roughly 15 million against. The fund was originally framed as a “defense” fund and later renamed an education fund.⁠[2]

On July 13, 2021, the DeFi Education Fund announced that it was converting 500,000 of the one million UNI it had received about two weeks earlier into USDC, for roughly $10 million. The original proposal had planned to release the tokens over four to five years to avoid diluting the UNI price, and the sale caused controversy in the Uniswap community.⁠[2][3]

On August 30, 2021, the DeFi Education Fund announced its first round of grants, totaling $195,000 to four winners chosen from 18 applicants: Future Majority, a Washington political strategy nonprofit, received $90,000 for polling; Diversity in Blockchain received $50,000 for animated shorts; Techdirt founder Mike Masnick received $50,000 for research; and Matt Bartlett, a fellow at the University of Auckland law school, received $5,500 for a report on DAOs.⁠[3]

Policy director Miller Whitehouse-Levine said of the community dissent: “Controversy, dissent etc. are going to be healthy features of any features of decentralized governance.”⁠[3]

On March 25, 2024, the DeFi Education Fund and Beba LLC, an apparel company in Waco, Texas, sued the Securities and Exchange Commission in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas. Beba sought a declaratory judgment that its free BEBA token airdrops were not securities transactions; the DeFi Education Fund joined as co-plaintiff only on the second claim, which alleged that the SEC had adopted its digital asset enforcement policy without proper rulemaking, in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act.⁠[4][5]

The SEC moved to dismiss on July 8, 2024, and the plaintiffs filed an amended complaint on July 24. On March 17, 2025, the court granted the parties’ motion to hold the case in abeyance for 60 days. On March 13, 2026, the plaintiffs voluntarily dismissed the case without prejudice, attributing the decision to the work of the SEC Crypto Task Force and to speeches indicating a change in the Commission’s position on free airdrops.⁠[4]

In May 2024, GFX Labs submitted Uniswap Proposal 63 to give the DeFi Education Fund another one million UNI in two tranches: 500,000 on passage and 500,000 streamed linearly over 12 months, with governance able to stop the stream. The funds were to expand legislative, regulatory and legal advocacy and public education, including larger litigation efforts, state-level engagement and more staff; the DeFi Education Fund committed to hold at least half of the tokens it received for 12 months and to pre-disclose sales plans in writing.⁠[6]

The proposal passed in on-chain voting held from May 27 to June 2, with about 49.47 million votes for and about 1,540 against.⁠[6]

On March 13, 2025, the DeFi Education Fund announced that chief legal officer Amanda Tuminelli would become executive director on March 17, succeeding chief executive Miller Whitehouse-Levine, who joined the board. Tuminelli had been the organization’s chief legal officer since March 2023; she previously worked at Kobre & Kim, clerked for Judge Ann M. Donnelly of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, and practiced at Dechert LLP.⁠[7][8]

Tuminelli said that “For the first time in DeFi's history, there is a significant, bipartisan group of U.S. policymakers” thinking constructively about crypto legislation and regulation.⁠[7]

As of November 2026, the DeFi Education Fund team page lists Amanda Tuminelli as chief executive officer and chief legal officer, with other staff including chief communications officer Jennifer Rosenthal and vice president of government relations Talia Davis. The DeFi Education Fund board comprises Rebecca Rettig, chief legal officer of Jito Labs; Miller Whitehouse-Levine, chief executive of the Solana Policy Institute; and Daniel Gerhardstein, head of policy at Jump Trading GroupJump TradingJump Trading is a proprietary trading firm headquartered in Chicago. It was founded in 1999 by two former Chicago Mercantile Exchange pit traders, built its business on algorithmic and high-frequency trading, and trades equities, options, credit, commodities, futures, and digital assets. Since 2021 its crypto business has operated under the Jump Crypto brand and has worked on blockchain infrastructure projects including Wormhole, Pyth, and Firedancer; in December 2024 its subsidiary Tai Mo Shan settled with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over trading related to TerraUSD, paying about $123 million without admitting or denying the findings.Open the full entry.⁠[9]

The same page lists the board of the affiliated DeFi Education Foundation: Greg Xethalis, general counsel of Multicoin CapitalMulticoin CapitalMulticoin Capital began operations on October 1, 2017, and invests mainly in crypto companies and protocols across public and private markets. It runs a Master Fund that invests mainly in tokens, as well as venture funds that back early-stage companies.Open the full entry; Michael Mosier, managing partner of Arktouros; and Amanda Tuminelli.⁠[9]

DeFi Education Fund: Official website: https://www.defieducationfund.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[10]

X: Public account: https://x.com/fund_defi (opens in a new window).⁠[10]

LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry: Public profile: https://www.linkedin.com/company/defieducationfund/ (opens in a new window).⁠[10]

YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is Google’s video-sharing and creator platform, founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim and acquired by Google in 2006. Built around video uploading, viewing, and creator earnings, the platform has developed Shorts, YouTube Music, Premium, YouTube TV, and products for children, and is headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States.Open the full entry: Public channel: https://www.youtube.com/@DeFiEducationFund (opens in a new window).⁠[10]