Decentralized Finance (DeFi): An Emergent Alternative Financial Architecture

Abstract

Decentralized Finance (DeFi) offers the promise of an emergent alternative financial architecture that prioritizes disintermediation and decentralization to empower individuals along cryptoanarchist principles. Yet it is mired in considerable difficulties including market manipulation, distortionary incentives, excess short-termism, Ponzi-schemes, and money-laundering challenges that also foment a considerable level of dissuasion against DeFi’s wider adoption. This paper critically evaluates many of these important facets at a time when DeFi is emerging as a disintermediated and experimental financial praxis.