It’s now virtually unarguable that decentralized finance is blockchain’s “killer use case.” Total value locked in DeFi grew by over 3,000% over the year leading up to January 2021. On the DApp Radar rankings, eight of the top 10 DApps on Ethereum are DeFi. Uniswap sees more users than any other application and is set to average $1 billion per day in trading volume for January.
Given the challenges we see with centralized exchanges, the push toward DeFi is hardly surprising. Centralized platforms offer limited lending and staking opportunities, and those that do exist depend on users putting their trust in the exchange. They’re also subject to region blocking and trade censorship, suffer from fragmented liquidity due to a disparity in product offerings, and have a limited range of instruments.