The Rise Of DeFi 分散式金融的未来
Is it the future or a market bubble? 炒作还是大有用处?
DeFi (Decentralised Finance) is a set of Distributed Ledger Technology based financial services and applications intended to augment or replace the currently existing centralised financial system. In recent weeks, the amount of funds locked up in DeFi services have increased exponentially and recently exceed US$4 billion. DeFi evolution has seen DEXs (Decentralized Exchanges) experiencing higher trading volumes, with lending protocols attracting increasing investment.
However, the concept of DeFi is not relatively new. In fact, since the beginning of Ethereum, there have been various projects focusing on replacing the centralised financial system with the implementation of smart contracts. For those of you who are familiar with the nature of blockchain technology, one of its greatest features and drivers of value is its ability to facilitate transactions between various parties without the need for any middlemen, replacing all “intermediaries” with program codes, which will maximize the efficiency of financial services and minimizing costs. With DeFi services proliferating, billions of people belonging to the unbanked population will also have access to financial services as long as they have internet connection. By implementing blockchain technology into traditional finance system activities like payments, borrowing, or investing, DeFi has the potential to create new avenues to access these services. The popular smart contract platform for DeFi projects at the moment is the Ethereum Network. Bitcoin, on the other hand, does not offer complex smart contract capabilities. However, it is a valuable and highly liquid cryptocurrency asset, therefore, you will find DeFi services locking up Bitcoins as collateral and produce Ethereum-based tokens which track the value of BTC.
Let’s explore some of the popular services DeFi offers.
Lending platforms: Other than providing loan opportunities to the unbanked, it is also important to compare decentralised loans with existing loan systems from centralised financial institutions. Have you ever compared the interest you earned from your bank’s savings account with the interest you need to pay if you borrow the same amount?
You will notice that there is a huge discrepancy between the interest earned and interest paid. This discrepancy is how banks earn their revenue as a middleman between lending and borrower. Although peer to peer lending is an alternative that simplifies the lending ecosystem and reduces the intermediary cost, it still relies on centralized intermediaries. On the other hand, thanks to blockchain technology, DeFi platforms are able to execute all actions via an immutable smart contract and eliminate the need for a middleman. Once a smart contract is executed, not even the creator/developer has the authority to access funds from the capital pool. All actions will be executed in accordance with the codes specified in the contract.
DEX: The hype around DeFi appears to have benefited decentralized exchanges, with trading volumes on DEXs setting new all-time highs. Most centralised cryptocurrency exchanges like Exonium have long been the primary locations for cryptocurrency trading, among other offerings. Users’ funds are kept by a trusted middleman, usually the operator of the exchange. However, for decentralized exchanges, users have full control over their funds and wallet. Trading is executed through smart contracts and all trading activities will be reflected on the blockchain, unlike a centralized exchange. However, liquidity, the key driver for the adoption and user growth of cryptocurrency exchanges may be a concern on Decentralised Exchange. Decentralized exchanges are divided into two types of liquidity models:
- Order Book Peer-to-Peer — uses a bid/ask system to fulfill trades. This does not work well with DeFi coins and tokens due to illiquidity, which may result in price fluctuations.
- Automated Market Makers (AMM) — leverage on a set of algorithms that set parameters to pool liquidity from traders and make markets. Instead of using a traditional order book, the funds for both buyers and sellers in AMM-based exchanges are stored in on-chain liquidity pools.
Despite the surging volumes on decentralized exchanges in June, it is still too early for DEXs to be compared to centralized crypto exchanges. Poor user interfaces on decentralized exchanges, compared to popular centralized exchanges, are also hampering user adoption. Beside, the recent high transaction fees on the Ethereum network is also a key concern on Decentralised Exchanges.
Summary of the advantages of DeFi (Neglecting ROI):
- Cheaper Cross Border Payments. As blockchain does not rely on middlemen to process transactions, DeFi services will have the ability to provide lower global remittance fee as compared to existing rates.
- Bank the Unbank. Over 1.7 billion adults are denied access to traditional financial institutions. The technical nature of DeFi will be able to tear down the social status, wealth segregation, and location barriers in order to provide traditional financial services such as lending and borrowing to the unbank population.
- Privacy and Enhanced Security. Data breaches and online malicious attacks are some of the major concerns of centralized financial institutions. With a decentralized system, there will not be a centralized single source of failure that would allow for this type of breach to occur.
- Censorship resistant. Since DeFi does not require a single authority or regulator to operate, services and transactions on the blockchain cannot be censored or shut off by any government or centralised authority.
- Permission-less. The fact that DeFi is both decentralised and permissionless is equally as important. It means, essentially, anyone can use DeFi services, with the only barrier to adoption being understanding the fundamentals of what DeFi had to offer.
Is DeFi the Next Big Thing, or a Bubble?
In 2020, the ease of creating new DeFi products to the market and the high ROI for investors has caused a surge of interest within the cryptocurrency community, and many actually relate DeFi projects to be the next “ICO bubble”. DeFi products remove a lot of the friction that’s present in finance. Anyone can create them and place them on the market, with no restrictions or oversight. When something sounds too good to be true, it’s usually not true. Am I wrong?
Yield Farming Trend
The most egregious (or amazing, depending on how you see it) example of DeFi is the practice of Yield Farming. Protocols reward their users with their own governance tokens, essentially as a payment for using the platform. Yield farming is the act of leveraging different DeFi protocols to earn a yield on their assets. With yield farming, lenders and borrowers can earn incentives for participating in the market. Investors deposit a certain cryptocurrency, borrow other cryptocurrency and move their positions across different markets where arbitrage opportunities are available. Investors can also borrow from one platform and deposit in another project multiple times to increase their overall gains. In short, a yield farmer participates in market making to contribute needed liquidity to a specific coin or token and, in doing so, earns the rate of return, plus an extra reward of the protocol’s token. In some cases, yield farmers are able to obtain profits well over an astonishing 100% Annual Percentage Yield (APY) through a combination of lending interest and token incentives.
Massive returns on investments often come with high risk of loss. Even Ethereum co-creator Vitalik Buterin expressed his concern about these exorbitant ROI currently found in DeFi. The Yield Farming frenzy started when Compound began the live distribution of COMP, with Compound reaching more than US$600M total value locked. Investors who missed out on the initial gains of Compound will start looking for similar projects to invest in and hopefully make a profit. The high interest rate and return on investment for DeFi projects has created a hype within the crypto community, similar to the ICO trend back in 2017. However, unlike the 2017 ICO trend where retail investors are just “speculating”, the high yields of DeFi are incentivizing greater participation and efforts geared toward robust market development. Therefore, it will be unfair to compare the ICO bubble with the growth of DeFi in the current market.
Scalability and Speed
By the same token, it is also important to take note that a common drawback for blockchain based applications is their scalability issue. Bitcoin and Ethereum networks have limited transaction throughput, as compared to their centralised counterpart such as Visa. Overcoming the issue of speed will be a crucial challenge for DeFi to overcome in order for mass adoption to be feasible. Rising congestion on the Ethereum network correlated to the DeFi trend has driven up transaction fees to an all-time high since 2018. To add salt to the wound, the scaling solution that Ethereum developers promised seems to be years away. ETH market capitalization as of July 2020 is around $27 billion, second to Bitcoin, and Ethereum-based projects dominate the DeFi market. However, the sudden increment in transaction fees is raising concerns among some of the cryptocurrency community who fret that Ethereum’s vision to be the world computer is still far from being feasible as there is no clear end in sight to the surging traffic. However, this should not be a long term issue once the new PoS algorithm update for Ethereum is completed. This would offer users a cheaper and more efficient experience on the Ethereum Network.
Regulatory
Although the concept of blockchain and cryptocurrencies are not supposed to be regulated by any institutions or government, the legal financial system is deeply intertwined with the legal system in many countries of the world. In theory, Decentralised finance will shorten the financial distance between people, and reduce financial boundaries around the world. As a result of this, any attempt to disrupt the existing financial system will create a series of regulation barriers that will need to be addressed by DeFi projects in order to achieve wide scale adoption. One of the possible measures to mitigate regulatory intervention is by integrating KYC and AML into the “DeFi” ecosystems such that this new technology will not be leveraged by criminals for illicit purposes.
Final Thoughts
DeFi is more than a short-term trend and it fundamentally innovates our existing financial system. Decentralised Finance is a promise to give the world access to an unlimited number of financial products and services. These opportunities, which range from simple loan and savings accounts to complex trading platforms, are nearly frictionless and require little infrastructure. However, just like any other new technology, it is important to steer away from the hype and examine the possible barriers that lie in the path to mass adoption. Within the realm of Decentralised Finance or cryptocurrency in general, examples of barriers to adoption include legal and regulatory obstruction, transaction speed as well as scalability. Only by addressing and overcoming these challenges will DeFi reach the potential that seems to be all the buzz in the blockchain-verse.
On the bright side, the existing financial system will undergo major changes in the foreseeable future with DeFi and blockchain technology becoming more mature. Furthermore, most of the challenges mentioned above can be overcome without much technical obstacles.
***Disclaimer: This content is not financial advice and should not form the basis of any financial investment decisions nor be seen as a recommendation to buy or sell any good or product. Trading cryptocurrency is complex and comes with a high risk of losing money. You should carefully consider whether trading cryptocurrencies is right for you and take the time to learn how trading works and decide how much money you are prepared to risk.
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Quick guide:
分散式金融（DeFi）是一组基于分布式账本技术的金融服务和应用程序，旨在增强或替换当前现有的集中式财务系统。最近几周，锁定在分散式金融服务中的资金数量呈指数增长，最近超过40亿美元。随着分散式金融的发展，去中心化交易所交易量越来越大，借贷协议吸引了越来越多的投资。
但是，分散式金融的概念并不是相对较新。实际上，自从以太坊开始以来，已经有许多项目致力于通过实施智能合约来取代集中式金融系统。对于那些熟悉区块链技术本质的人来说，其最大的特点和价值驱动力之一是它无需任何中间人就能促进各方之间交易的能力，可以用程序代码代替所有“中介”，最大化金融服务效率并最小化成本。随着分散式金融服务的激增，只要没有互联网连接，数十亿无银行账户人口也将获得金融服务。通过将区块链技术应用于付款，借贷或投资等传统金融系统活动中，分散式金融有潜力创造访问这些服务的新途径。目前，用于分散式金融项目的流行智能合约平台是以太坊网络。另一方面，比特币不提供复杂的智能合约功能。但是，它是一种宝贵且流动性很高的加密货币资产，因此，您会发现分散式金融服务将比特币作为抵押，并生成基于以太坊的令牌来跟踪BTC的价值。
让我们探讨分散式金融i提供的一些服务。
贷款平台：除了向没有银行账户的人提供贷款机会外，将分散式贷款与中央金融机构的现有贷款系统进行比较也很重要。您是否曾经将您从银行储蓄帐户中获得的利息与如果您借入相同金额的利息所需支付的利息进行了比较？
您会注意到，所赚取的利息与所付利息之间存在巨大差异。这种差异是银行作为中间商在贷款和借款人之间获得收入的方式。尽管点对点借贷是简化借贷生态系统并降低中介成本的替代方法，但它仍然依赖于集中的中介机构。另一方面，得益于区块链技术，分散式金融平台能够通过一成不变的智能合约执行所有动作，并且无需中间人。一旦执行了智能合约，甚至创建者/开发者都没有权限从资金池中获取资金。所有操作将按照合同中指定的代码执行。
去中心化交易所：分散式金融周围的炒作似乎使去中心化交易所受益，去中心化交易所的交易量创下了历史新高。像嘉库这样的集中式加密货币交易所，长期以来一直是加密货币交易的主要场所。用户的资金由值得信赖的中间人（通常是交易所的运营商）保存。但是，对于分散式交易所，用户可以完全控制其资金和钱包。交易通过智能合约执行，所有交易活动将反映在区块链上，这与集中式交易不同。但是，流动性是采用加密货币交易所和推动用户增长的主要驱动力，这是去中心化交易所的一个问题。去中心化交易所分为两种类型的流动性模型：
点对点订单簿-使用出价/要求系统完成交易。由于缺乏流动性，这对于分散式金融代币不能有效运作，这可能会导致价格波动。
自动化做市商-利用一组算法来设置参数以汇集交易者的流动性并建立市场。与使用传统的订单簿不同，基于自动化做市商的交易所中买卖双方的资金都存储在链上流动性池中。
尽管6月去中心化交易所的交易量激增，但将去中心化交易所与集中式加密交易所进行比较仍为时过早。与流行的集中式交换机相比，分散式交换机上的用户界面较差，也妨碍了用户的采用。此外，最近以太坊网络上的高额交易费用也是去中心化交易所的主要关注点。
分散式金融优势的摘要 （忽略投资回报率）：
- 便宜的跨境付款- 由于区块链不依赖中间人来处理交易，因此分散式金融服务将能够提供比现有费率更低的全球汇款费用。
- 开户无银行账户人口- 超过17亿成年人无法进入传统金融机构。 分散式金融的技术性质将能够消除社会地位，财富隔离和位置障碍，以便为无银行账户人口提供诸如借贷的传统金融服务。
- 隐私和增强的安全性- 数据泄露和在线恶意攻击是集中式金融机构的主要关注点。对于分散式系统，将不会有一个集中的单一故障源来允许这种类型的违例发生。耐审查。由于分散式金融不需要单个机构或监管者进行操作，因此任何政府或中央机构都无法审查或关闭区块链上的服务和交易。
- 无需许可。 分散式金融无需许可从本质上讲，这意味着任何人都可以使用分散式金融服务，而采用该服务的唯一障碍是了解分散式金融必须提供的基础知识。
那么，分散式金融是下一个伟大的创新，还是市场泡沫？
2020年，向市场创建新的分散式金融产品的简易性和投资者的高投资回报率引起了加密货币社区的极大兴趣，许多人实际上将分散式金融项目与下一个“ ICO泡沫”联系起来。分散式金融产品消除了金融中的许多摩擦。任何人都可以创建它们并将其投放市场，而不受任何限制或监督。当某事听起来好得令人难以置信时，我们应该保持距离。我错了吗？或许.
分散式金融最令人担忧（或震惊，取决于您的看法）的示例是“收益耕种”的实践。协议使用其自己的管理令牌奖励用户，实质上是作为使用该平台的一种报酬。收益耕种是利用不同的分散式金融协议来获得其资产的良种的行为。通过收益耕种，贷款人和借款人可以获得参与市场的激励。投资者存入某种加密货币，借入另一种加密货币，并将其仓位转移到有套利机会的不同市场。投资者还可以从一个平台借款并多次存入另一个项目，以增加整体收益。简而言之，一个收益耕种参与者做市，为特定的硬币或代币贡献所需的流动性，并以此赚取回报率，以及该协议代币的额外奖励。在某些情况下，通过贷款利息和通证激励措施的结合，收益耕种者能够以惊人的100％的年百分率获得丰厚的利润。
大量的投资回报通常伴随着很高的损失风险。甚至以太坊的联合创始人也对分散式金融中目前存在的这些过高的ROI表示了担忧。当化合物开始实时分配COMP时，开始产生收益耕种狂潮，化合物的总价值超过了6亿美元。错过了Compound最初收益的投资者将开始寻找类似的项目进行投资，并希望获利。 分散式金融项目的高利率和投资回报率在加密货币社区内引起了炒作，类似于2017年的ICO趋势。但是，与2017年ICO趋势不同，散户投资者只是在“投机”，分散式金融的高收益率正在鼓励更大的参与度和为稳健的市场发展而努力。因此，将ICO泡沫与分散式金融在当前市场的增长进行比较将是不公平的。
同样，注意基于区块链的应用程序的常见缺点是可扩展性问题，这一点也很重要。与集中式交易（如Visa）相比，比特币和以太坊网络的交易吞吐量有限。为了使大规模采用可行，克服速度问题将是分散式金融要克服的关键挑战。以太坊网络上与分散式金融趋势相关的拥堵状况不断加剧，已将交易费用推高至2018年以来的历史新高。以太坊开发人员承诺的扩展解决方案似乎还有数年之遥。截至2020年7月，ETH的市值约为270亿美元，仅次于比特币，而以太坊为基础的项目主导着分散式金融市场。但是，交易费用的突然增加引起了一些加密货币社区的担忧，他们担心以太坊成为世界电脑的愿景仍然不可行，因为流量激增尚无定论。但是，一旦以太坊的新权益证明(PoS)算法更新完成，这应该不是一个长期问题。这将为用户提供以太坊网络更便宜，更有效的体验。
尽管不应由任何机构或政府来监管区块链和加密货币的概念，但法律金融体系与世界许多国家的法律体系息息相关。从理论上讲，去中心化金融将缩短人与人之间的金融距离，并缩小全球金融边界。结果，任何破坏现有金融系统的尝试都会产生一系列监管障碍，分散式金融项目需要解决这些障碍，以实现大规模采用。减轻监管干预的一种可能措施是将KYC和AML集成到“ 分散式金融”生态系统中，这样犯罪分子就不会将这种新技术用于非法目的。
去中心化金融是向世界提供无限数量的金融产品和服务的承诺。从简单的贷款和储蓄帐户到复杂的交易平台，这些机会几乎是无摩擦的，并且几乎不需要基础设施。但是，就像其他任何新技术一样，重要的是要避免大肆宣传，并检查大规模采用道路上可能存在的障碍。一般而言，在去中心化金融或加密货币领域中，采用障碍的例子包括法律和法规障碍，交易速度以及可扩展性。只有解决并克服这些挑战，分散式金融才能发挥潜力。
***此内容不是财务建议，不应作为任何财务投资决策的基础，也不应被视为购买或出售任何商品或产品的建议。交易加密货币很复杂，并且有很高的赔钱风险。您应该仔细考虑交易加密货币是否适合您，并花点时间学习交易的工作方式并确定您准备冒多少风险。
关于嘉库
嘉库是一个全新的世界级加密货币交易所，重点关注用户资产的安全性和保护以及高流动性。
嘉库成立是为了推动加密货币被广泛采用。融合了交易所生态系统的最佳功能和社交网络平台的原理，该交易所旨在通过赋予交易员权力和能力，将权力重新交到社区手中。
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