What Is DeFi? Understanding Decentralised Finance (2024)

Forbes Advisor has provided this content for educational reasons only and not to help you decide whether or not to invest in cryptocurrency. Should you decide to invest in cryptocurrency or in any other investment, you should always obtain appropriate financial advice and only invest what you can afford to lose.

Decentralised finance, or DeFi, integrates cryptocurrency and blockchain technology to manage financial transactions without external agents and centralised institutions. It relies on hardware, software, and stablecoins to support app development.

The aim of DeFi is to democratise finance by replacing legacy, centralised institutions with peer-to-peer relationships that can provide a full spectrum of financial services, from everyday banking, loans and mortgages, to complicated contractual relationships and asset trading.

Centralised finance today

Today, almost every aspect of banking, lending and trading is managed by centralised systems, operated by governing bodies and gatekeepers. Regular consumers typically need to deal with a raft of financial middlemen to get access to everything from loans and mortgages to trading stocks and bonds.

In the UK, regulatory bodies such as the Financial Conduct Authority set the rules for centralised financial institutions and brokerages, and Parliament amends the rules over time.

As a result, there are few paths for consumers to access capital and financial services directly. They cannot bypass middlemen such as banks, exchanges and lenders, who earn a percentage of every financial and banking transaction.

Decentralised finance

DeFi challenges this centralised financial system by disempowering middlemen and gatekeepers, and empowering everyday people via peer-to-peer exchanges.

Rafael Cosman, CEO and co-founder of TrustToken, says: “Decentralised finance is an unbundling of traditional finance. DeFi takes the key elements of the work done by banks, exchanges and insurers today – such as lending, borrowing and trading – and puts it in the hands of regular people.”

Here’s how that might play out. Today, you might put your savings in anonline savings accountand earn a 0.50% interest rate on your money. The bank then turns around and lends that money to another customer at 3% interest and pockets the difference profit.

With DeFi, people lend their savings directly to others, cutting out the bank’s take and earning the full 3% return on their money.

You might think, “Hey, I already do this when I send my friends money with PayPal.” But you don’t. You still have to have a debit card or bank account linked to those apps to send funds, so these peer-to-peer payments are still reliant on centralised financial ‘middlemen’ to work.

DeFi runs on blockchain

Blockchain andcryptocurrencyare the core technologies that enable decentralised finance.

When you make a transaction in your conventional bank account, it’s recorded in a private ledger – your banking transaction history – which is owned and managed by a large financial institution. Blockchain is a decentralised, distributed public ledger where financial transactions are recorded in computer code.

When we say that blockchain is distributed, that means all parties using a DeFi application have an identical copy of the public ledger, which records each and every transaction in encrypted code. That secures the system by providing users with anonymity, plus verification of payments and a record of asset ownership that’s (nearly) impossible to alter by fraudulent activity.

When we say blockchain is decentralised, that means there is no middleman or gatekeeper managing the system. Transactions are verified and recorded by parties who use the same blockchain, through a process of solving complex mathematics problems and adding new blocks of transactions to the chain.

Advocates of DeFi assert that the decentralised blockchain makes financial transactions secure and more transparent than the private, opaque systems employed in centralised finance.

How DeFi is being used

DeFI is making its way into a wide variety of simple and complex financial transactions. It’s powered by decentralised (dapps) or other programs called “protocols.” Dapps and protocols handle transactions in the two main cryptocurrencies,Bitcoin(BTC) andEthereum(ETH).

While Bitcoin is the more popularcryptocurrency, Ethereum is much more adaptable to a wider variety of uses, meaning much of the dapp and protocol landscape uses Ethereum-based code.

Here are some of the ways dapps and protocols are already being used:

• Traditional financial transactions Anything from payments, trading securities and insurance, to lending and borrowing are already happening with DeFi.
• Decentralised exchanges (DEXs) Right now, most cryptocurrency investors use centralised exchanges. DEXs facilitate peer-to-peer financial transactions and let users retain control over their money.
• E-walletsDeFi developers are creating digital wallets that can operate independently of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges and give investors access to everything from cryptocurrency to blockchain-based games.
• Stable coinsWhile cryptocurrencies are notoriously volatile, stable coins attempt to stabilise their values by tying them to non-cryptocurrencies, like the British pound.
• Yield harvestingDeFi makes it possible for speculative investors to lend crypto and potentially reap big rewards if the proprietary coins DeFi borrowing platforms pay them for agreeing to the loan appreciate rapidly.
• Non-fungible tokens (NFTs)NFTs create digital assets out of typically non-tradable assets, like videos of slam dunks or the first tweet on Twitter. NFTs commodify the previously uncommodifiable.
• Flash loansThese are cryptocurrency loans that borrow and repay funds in the same transaction. Sound counterintuitive? Here’s how it works: Borrowers have the potential to make money by entering into a contract encoded on the Ethereum blockchain – no lawyers needed – that borrows funds, executes a transaction and repays the loan instantly. If the transaction can’t be executed, or it’ll be at a loss, the funds automatically go back to the loaner. If the lender does make a profit, they can pocket it, minus any interest charges or fees. Think of flash loans as decentralised arbitrage.

The DeFi market gauges adoption by measuring what’s called locked value, which calculates how much money is currently working in different DeFi protocols. At present, the total locked value in DeFi protocols is estimated to be nearly £34 billion.

Adoption of DeFi is powered by the omnipresent nature of blockchain: The same moment a dapp is encoded on the blockchain, it’s globally available. While most centralised financial instruments and technologies roll out slowly over time, governed by the respective regulations of regional economies, dapps exist outside these rules, increasing their potential reward – but – also increasing their risks.

Risks and downsides of DeFi

DeFi is an emerging phenomenon that comes with many risks. As a recent innovation, decentralised finance has not been stress tested by long or widespread use. In addition, national authorities are taking a harder look at the systems it’s putting in place, with an eye toward regulation. Some of the other risks of DeFi include:

• No consumer protections DeFi has thrived in the absence of rules and regulations. But this also means users may have little recourse should a transaction go foul. In centralised finance, for instance, the Financial Services Compensation Scheme reimburses deposit account holders up to £85,000 per account, per institution if a bank fails. Moreover, banks are required by law to hold a certain amount of their capital as reserves, to maintain stability and cash you out of your account any time you need. No similar protections exist in DeFi.
• Hackers are a threat While a blockchain may be nearly impossible to alter, other aspects of DeFi are at large risk of being hacked, which can lead to funds theft or loss. All of decentralised finance’s potential use cases rely on software systems that are vulnerable to hackers.
• CollateralisationCollateralis a thing of value used to secure a loan. When you get a mortgage, for instance, the loan is collateralised by the home you’re buying. Nearly all DeFi lending transactions require collateral equal to at least 100% of the value of the loan, if not more. These requirements vastly restrict who is eligible for many types of DeFi loans.
• Private key requirements.With DeFi and cryptocurrency, you must secure the wallets used to store your cryptocurrency assets. Wallets are secured with private keys, which are long, unique codes known only to the owner of the wallet. If the private key is lost, access to the funds is lost as well – there is no way to recover a lost private key.

The future of DeFi

Dan Simerman, head of financial relations at IOTA Foundation, a DeFi research and development group, says investors will soon have more independence, which will allow them to “deploy [assets] in creative ways that seem impossible today.”

DeFi also carries big implications for the big data sector as it matures to enable new ways to commodify data, Simerman says.

But for all its promise, DeFi has a long road ahead, especially when it comes to uptake by the general public.

Cryptocurrency is unregulated in the UK. The UK regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority, has repeatedly warned investors that they risk losing all their money if they buy cryptocurrency, with no possibility of compensation.