Decentralized Finance (DeFi) is the umbrella term used to describe a wide array of decentralized financial protocols and applications revolving around cryptocurrency.
The blockchain has been DeFi’s main source of inspiration. DeFi applications can be used by practically anyone, ranging from decentralized exchanges and stablecoins to high-interest savings accounts like BlockFi.
The majority of DeFi projects are actually built on Ethereum ‒ the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency platform. This is because Ethereum is composed of Solidity (and other Ethereum programming languages), which have been specially designed for creating and issuing smart contracts; these automatically execute transactions when certain conditions are met.
As DeFi grows in popularity, new initiatives like yield farming and liquidity mining are being developed. You can keep up to date with the Total Value Locked (TVL) and other DeFi rankings here.
