Decentralized Finance (DeFi) – A business guide to understanding benefits, applications and risks

Decentralized finance is rapidly rising in popularity as a way to provide financial services outside of the traditional banking system. The adoption of blockchain technology in finance and the spread of decentralized financial services is shaping a new world called Decentralized Finance (DeFi). This world is characterized by global accessibility of financial services, safe transactions, low transaction prices, and the latest DeFi trends revolving in the market.

While decentralized finance (DeFi) has the potential to provide several benefits, it is also important to understand the risks involved before getting started. So, through this DeFi guide on decentralized finance development for businesses, we will walk you through the basics of decentralized finance, including what it is, how it works, and some of the major challenges you need to know before getting started. So without further ado, let’s get started.

What is decentralized finance – DeFi?

Decentralized finance or DeFi is a monetary system that is built on public blockchains. The components of open finance consist of protocols, digital assets, dApps (decentralized applications), and smart contracts, which are built on blockchain.

While many of us know Ethereum and Bitcoin as cryptocurrencies, very few of us know that they are open source, vast networks which allows users to develop apps that enable financial activity to brew centralized institutions’ involvement.

The introduction of decentralized finance has unlocked a world of new possibilities for users to interact with the Ethereum blockchain in ways that were not possible before. By using DeFi, users can lend or borrow Ethereum-based assets, earn interest on their crypto holdings, trade digital assets without having to use a centralized exchange, and much more.

The aim of introducing decentralized finance is to provide users with an alternative to traditional financial systems that are often opaque and inaccessible. By making financial services more accessible and user-friendly, it is hoped that DeFi will lead to a more inclusive financial system that works for everyone.

How does DeFi work?

Decentralized finance provides a way to access financial services without the need for centralized intermediaries. It uses smart contracts to enable peer-to-peer interactions on the Ethereum blockchain. There are two major components that allow a financial system to work effectively; the first is the infrastructure needed to operate on and the second is the currency that is needed to operate with.

Infrastructure – Ethereum is a DeFi platform used for writing decentralized programs. Through Ethereum, you can create smart contracts that can be used to establish a set of conditions or rules under which an agreement can be made. Once a smart contract has been deployed, it cannot be altered.

Currency – In order to create a secure, reliable decentralized finance system, a cryptocurrency is needed that can be used to interact with the various protocols. Generally, DeFi uses the DAI stablecoin as its currency. DAI is a decentralized stablecoin that is pegged against the US Dollar.

Now that we know what is DeFi and how does DeFi works, let’s have a comparative look at DeFi vs traditional financial system in our (decentralized finance) DeFi guide.

Benefits of DeFi

Traditional banks are administrative in nature and expensive to run. The process for transactions takes time and has removed numerous individuals out of the financial framework because of their rigid rules and requirements. . DeFi came to settle a large number of these issues. Some of its key benefits are listed below:

Permission-less

One of the key benefits of decentralized finance (DeFi) is that it is permissionless. This means that anyone can access DeFi applications and services without having to obtain approval from a centralized authority. This openness and accessibility are few of the main attractions of DeFi, as it allows anyone with an internet connection to participate in the thriving ecosystem.

In addition, permission-less DeFi platforms are often more secure than their centralized counterparts, as they are not vulnerable to single points of failure. This makes them ideal for storing value and participating in financial transactions. Consequently, the permissionless nature of DeFi is a major selling point for those looking to get involved in the world of decentralized finance.

Interoperability

With decentralized accounts, developers can freely expand on top of existing protocols, customize interfaces, and integrate third-party apps. Because of this sort of adaptability, DeFi conventions are often known as ‘Money Legos.’ New decentralized money applications can be built by consolidating other DeFi products.

For instance, stablecoins, decentralized trades, and forecast markets can be joined to frame a completely new and significantly more progressed DeFi finance market size and centers.

Transparency

DeFi empowers a more prominent degree of openness and accessibility. Since most DeFi protocols are based on the blockchain — a public ledger — all exercises are available to the general population. Anybody can see transactions, however, these records are not attached to anybody directly just like the case with traditional banks.

All things considered, accounts are pseudo-anonymous, posting only numerical addresses. Users with programming information can likewise access most DeFi products’ source code to review or build upon since they’re open source. Open-source codes are safer and of better quality than proprietary software, on account of local area connection.

Challenges associated with DeFi

Every high–return financial product comes with attached risk. Thus, it is a given that there will be a list of challenges for DeFi as well.

Understanding and securely handling cryptocurrencies tools call for specialized knowledge and attached risk. It becomes a user’s responsibility to take care of their key holdings and follow the process of multi-factor authentication with utmost privacy.

Also, there have been too many security–related incidents, which have begged the interference of stringent security and privacy algorithms brought in by various decentralized blockchain development firm . While the solution creators have been taking control of the task, as DeFi users you should also keep yourself updated with changed service terms between different wallets, exchanges, DeFi protocols, DeFi platforms, and other DeFi crypto projects.

Furthermore, in case of traditional currencies, investors have benchmarks and historical data to look at before taking any investment decision. The same privilege, however, is not given to the DeFi users. The lack of historical numbers makes it difficult to assess the associated risk. This, in turn, makes it necessary for the users to perform extensive research on their own.

The future of decentralized finance

Crypto is the latest digital offering of an industry that has been around since the beginning of time. In the time to come, we are poised to see every single financial service we use today under the fiat scheme getting rebuilt in the DeFi and open finance ecosystem.

The first generation of DeFi apps relies majorly on using collateral as a safeguard mechanism, meaning you will have to own a DeFi platform crypto and then offer it up as collateral for borrowing more DeFi cryptocurrency.

We are also already seeing massive innovation happening in the insurance domain as a result of the latest iterations of DeFi apps. A number of today’s DeFi loans are overcollateralized – the loans are made inherently safe because of the massive asset cushion kept in the reserve).

We have also witnessed DeFi crypto wallets becoming the portal of all digital asset activities. You can imagine it as a dashboard that not just shows the assets you own but also how much of it is locked up on different open finance protocols like pools, loans, and insurance contracts.

We are also seeing a shift towards decentralized governance and decision-making. Today, despite the focus on the word ‘decentralized’ in DeFi, the projects have master keys for DeFi platform development solution providers to shut down dapps for the sake of easy upgrades or to safeguard instances of buggy codes. The DeFi community, however, is looking for ways to enable stakeholders to vote on decisions, introducing a much wider range of DeFi use cases.

After all the speculations and POCs around new DeFi possibilities are being designed and made, something new is happening on the open financial system front – cryptocurrencies are bringing money online & giving people ways to make money on dapps. Our thought on the functionality of money is being challenged with every new disruptive launch.

The fact that the future of decentralized finance and the future of money lies in the hands of anyone who can code is nothing less than interesting for us as bystanders.