Benefits of DeFi

DeFi presents many benefits to its users. One of them is no more time restrictions!

In TradFi, you must operate within market hours, which normally run 9:30am-4pm local time on the weekdays, minus weekends and holidays. In DeFi, you can operate whenever you like. From a market participant perspective, time flexibility is a major benefit.

Trading stock image.

Additionally, there is less centralized failure risk. In the original Bitcoin genesis block, the first ever block on Bitcoin’s blockchain, was programmed a reference to the 2008 global financial crisis, which was largely caused by the decisions of centralized groups of bankers and financial agents. In DeFi, this issue is largely avoided because decisions are made by smart contracts, which are logical and not influenced by emotion.

Behind DeFi, is a series of “if, then” statements, the programmable smart contracts that you’ve learned about so far through Anza’s courses.

Automated financial system.

“If, then” statements benefit the DeFi user because neither the "if", nor the "then" are obstructable by human conduct; the financial conditions are not open to interpretation, like they are in TradFi. Financial conditions are written on the blockchain and are nonnegotiable. Of course, human error can still occur in the DeFi system, but this is largely on the user side. More reason to DYOR! (Remember that one?!)

DYOR - Do your own research: meaning you should always research something and not blindly trust one source.

Over the last few years, the user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) of many DeFi protocols - what you interact with in your web browser - has gotten smoother, sleeker, and more enjoyable.

Product designers have received feedback from their dApp users and iterated for a more seamless experience. Here’s what the UI looks like on ref.finance, NEAR’s largest DeFi protocol….for the UX, you’ll have to test it out yourself! (either with your testnet wallet or small transactions first).

Liquidity Pools on ref.finance.

DeFi itself has proven to function remarkably well amidst volatile conditions. If you’re interested in learning more, you can read this longer form report.

Despite all these benefits, DeFi is still risky. We’ll touch on that topic in the next section.