The DeFi Decoded Podcast

DAOs are increasingly governing larger and larger DeFi protocols and their respective treasuries. On this episode of DeFi Decoded, Andrew and Alex dig into the rapidly emerging DAO boom and discuss how they've helped accelerate DeFi ecosystem growth. While Decentralized Finance has the potential to revolutionize the financial system, Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) threaten to disrupt the very way humans organize, socialize, and coordinate. DAOs are on-chain entities that facilitate the governance and economic coordination of decentralized protocols. The typical DeFi protocol often collects a fee, which is then diverted to an on-chain treasury. Rather than having the core founders control this treasury, DAOs enable DeFi protocols to put tokens in control of them. Token holders vote on how to disburse funds, allocate budgets, and how to hire/fire contributors.

On this episode of DeFi Decoded, Andrew and Alex dig into the rapidly emerging DeFi Index fund movement and discuss how they're different from traditional ETF providers. Many of the largest asset managers in the traditional financial world are passive ETFs and Index funds; the decentralized financial system is no different! Smart contract-based index funds have been one of the fastest growing areas within the DeFi ecosystem. Like traditional ETFs, they create value for investors by packaging multiple different crypto assets into a basket or index, enabling investors to get passive exposure to an entire sector with one click of a button. They come with a twist though; these index funds are entirely blockchain-based and rather than having a centralized asset manager in charge, there is simply an open-source software protocol and decentralized governance system.

Pumpkin Spice Lattes may be back in stock at Starbucks, portending fall's arrival, but it's still very much NFT SUMMER in crypto land. August smashed all records for transaction value in this new breed of digital assets. There are no signs things are slowing down in September. OpenSea, a leading NFT platform, tallied volumes of more than $1 billion in a month, more than eBay's sales volume in the same period. Crypto art connoisseurs (or are they just speculators?) are now routinely spending thousands and sometimes millions of dollars on the rights to own the rights to certain rare images. The dam has broken and NFT culture is flooding into the mainstream. Tom Brady has an NFT platform called Autograph, and Steph Curry has changed his twitter avatar to an NFT he owns in his crypto wallet, and paid $180,000 for to boot. So what exactly are NFTs and why have they captured the zeitgeist? What does their stunning rise tell us about the viral power of crypto. Art is a big market- $67.4 billion in 2018- and growing, but that pales in comparison to the financial services industry, the prize DeFi is targeting. NFT's have taken the art world by storm. Even Damien Hirst is jumping on the band wagon. Will Wall Street be turned on its head when DeFi has its own "NFT Summer" moment? How do NFTs intersect with DeFi - art is an investible asset class and thanks to fractionalization, anyone can own a slice of an NFT or invest in an NFT fund. Could this democratize access to art as an investible asset class? Is this all positive, or is the speculative mania of NFTs going to cause a hangover across the asset class if (and perhaps inevitably when) the music stops? On this episode of DeFi decoded, Andrew and Alex pull out their provervbial easel and palette to paint a clearer picture of just what the heck is going on. Tune in!

Yield aggregators play a key role in the DeFi ecosystem by hooking into many different DeFi protocols for users in order to optimize yield. Yield aggregators work by having users stake tokens into their platform and allowing the platform to manage their assets for them. You can think of them as almost a robo advisor for DeFi. These yield platforms have grown tremendously alongside the growth in DeFi, with over $20b in total value locked. On this episode of DeFi Decoded, Andrew and Alex dig into the yield aggregator boom and discuss how they've helped accelerate DeFi ecosystem growth.

Insurance and risk management is a $6 trillion market worldwide, but so far is underrepresented in the DeFi space. Decentralized insurance platforms and prediction markets enable the trading of so-called 'event risk' between participants. These platforms upend the traditional model by allowing anyone to transact with each other through smart contracts, with no intermediaries, like insurance companies (for traditional insurance) or investment banks (for derivatives) sitting in the middle. We have seen DeFi protocols like Uniswap and Aave tackle and disrupt markets like trading and lending. Will decentralized insurance see the same kind of growth? What impact will these emerging decentralized models for insurance have on legacy institutions and business models? On this episode of DeFi Decoded, Andrew and Alex dig into the insurance and prediction market space and discuss how these platforms have the power to transform risk management. They compare the decentralized DeFi insurance platforms like NexusMutual and SX Protocol to their established centralized peers.

Tucked away in the infrastructure bill before congress is a 'pay-for' provision that claims it will raise $28 billion in new revenue from the cryptocurrency industry by requiring brokers to provide information on their users. To be sure, traditional exchanges and brokers such as Gemini, Coinbase and others should be regulated and comply with any new tax laws approved by congress. However, as originally written, the provision would have potentially included virtually every kind of participant in the industry, from miners to software developers, lightning nodes (Bitcoin) and others. If passed in its original form, it would have a chilling effect on innovation in DeFi, and throw the whole industry into a state of confusion and uncertainty. This is a pivotal moment in this trajectory of digital assets, DeFi and blockchain. At the time of recording, there is a compromise amendment that would clarify these rules and would exempt many of those non-broker entities, still no vote has been cast one way or the other and anything could happen. Regardless of a positive outcome, this is no way to make policy and the whole event should serve as a cautionary tale in future debates on this issue. The fight itself reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of how DeFi works. Governments are used to traditional custodial financial intermediaries, but DeFi is non-custodial. Regulators are used to overseeing companies and individuals whereas DeFi is built on clever code and math. By failing to understand how the technology works, governments could inadvertently de-rail one of the fastest growing and most promising sectors in the economy today. On this episode of DeFi decoded, Andrew and Alex will dig into this topic, discussing how we got here, what's at stake and what the future holds. You won't want to miss it!

Derivatives are the single largest asset class in the world, with an estimated notional value estimated to be over a quadrillion dollars. However, decentralized derivative platforms haven't yet taken off in constrast to the other high flying sectors of DeFi - why is that? These decentralized derivative platforms enable users to create their own derivatives and transact them with others, in a completely permissionless and decentralized fashion. On this episode of DeFi Decoded, Andrew and Alex dig into the decentralized derivatives space and discuss why derivative platforms have yet to experience the rapid growth that many are projecting. They compare the decentralized crypto derivative platforms like dYdX and Perpetual Protocol to their established centralized peers like BitMex and FTX.

On this episode of DeFi Decoded, Andrew and Alex dig into the lending boom and discuss how lending platforms have become the dominant hub of DeFi. They compare the decentralized crypto lending platforms like AAVE to their established centralized peers like BlockFi.

On this episode of DeFi Decoded, Andrew and Alex dig into the stablecoin boom and discuss how stablecoins have helped fueled the rise of DeFi. They discuss the the two kinds of stablecoins, centralized and decentralized. Centralized stablecoins such as USDC are issued by companies and backed by reserves.

On this edition of DeFi Decoded, Alex and Andrew start with a simple question; "What's a Decentralized Exchange anyway?" and from there discuss Uniswap and its significant role in reimagining financial services.