Systematic Analysis of Decentralized Finance

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to study analysis the Decentralized Finance (DeFi) literature. By synthesizing the themes and theorical frameworks, we aim to identify knowledge gaps and potential areas for future research in the DeFi landscape. We conduct bibliometric and content analysis on a corpus of 275 articles extracted from the Web of Science and Scopus databases. We use the Bibliometrix package in R software to apply co-citation and bibliographic coupling. We find three research clusters (a) socioeconomic (b) technology and (c) financial with their conceptual structure, interactions and transformations. Applying both co-citation and bibliographic coupling network analysis yields a dynamic view of the field tracing thematic evolution from its inception to the present day, revealing a decline in academic interest in DeFi security vulnerabilities in contrast to the growing emphasis on social media's influence on DeFi prices.