DeFi

DeFi, short for decentralized finance, represents a shift in the financial sector by leveraging blockchain technology, primarily Ethereum, to eliminate traditional financial intermediaries. It enables various financial applications, from simple transactions to complex contracts, through smart contracts that execute automatically under specific conditions. Key DeFi applications include decentralized exchanges (DEXs), stablecoins, lending platforms, and prediction markets. DeFi offers financial services like loans and interest-earning opportunities without traditional identity verification, relying instead on collateral, usually in cryptocurrency. This innovative sector promises increased accessibility and efficiency but comes with risks, such as market volatility and unregulated projects.


Tech

Sequoia-Backed Band Protocol Creeps Onto Chainlink’s Turf With Oracle Product

Band Protocol 2.0 launched Wednesday with its mainnet oracle solution, BandChain, leveraging the Cosmos SDK from Tendermint Labs.

Credit: Shutterstock

Markets

ConsenSys Muscles Into Compliance With New Regulatory Product for DeFi

ConsenSys says its new regulatory compliance product can analyze up to 280,000 different tokens.

ConsenSys' co-founder Joe Lubin (Credit: Michael del Castillo)

Finance

MakerDAO Weighs Accepting Real-World Assets as Crypto Loan Collateral

Decentralized finance may soon boast a real-world use case as MakerDao considers accepting freight invoices as collateral for dai loans.

Credit: Shutterstock

Tech

Compound’s Approach to DeFi Governance Starts With Giving Away COMP Tokens

Users of the Compound lending platform will begin earning COMP governance tokens in mid-June.

DEMOCRACY: Ancient Greeks on a 1955 drachma banknote. (Credit: Shutterstock)

Tech

RenBTC Quietly Goes Live in Latest Bid to Bring Bitcoin to Ethereum

RenBTC, the latest implementation of bitcoin on the Ethereum blockchain, quietly went live this week, though the general public can't yet mint thier own tokens.

Winter wren

Videos

A DeFi Deep Dive

DeFi (decentralized finance) exploded to over $1 billion in value deposited in DeFi applications over the last year. Learn why DeFi became the most recognized killer use case for Ethereum and this pandemic has only accelerated the urgency for DeFi. We begin the program with “Defying Traditional Finance” with Ryan Adams of Mythos Capital.

Foundations – Consensus: Distributed

Markets

Why Kyber Network Tokens Tripled to $100M Despite the Coronavirus Recession

Here's why Kyber Network's KNC is this season's hottest token across decentralized cryptocurrency markets.

Kyber Network CEO Loi Luu

Tech

Why $4M Dai Made From WBTC Matters for DeFi's Maturation

Crypto lender Nexo minted $4 million in dai on MakerDAO using synthetic bitcoin token WBTC as collateral. Here's why that matters.

Nexo co-founder Antoni Trenchev speaks at Consensus 2019. (CoinDesk archives)

Tech

UMA Project Creates Its First Synthetic Coin, Matching ETH Against BTC

Want to bet the price of ether is rising relative to the price of bitcoin? There's now a token for precisely that.

Credit: Shutterstock

Markets

Market Wrap: Here's Why Ether's Price Has Jumped 65% So Far This Year

Ether is outperforming bitcoin in 2020 but has lower liquidity and different technical dynamics than the world’s largest cryptocurrency.

Source: CoinDesk BPI