People sometimes ask me what my vision of DeFi is. This is a very tough question. DeFi is very messy with thousands of experiments happening. But high level, I think DeFi will go through 2 phases:

During the 1st phase (next 2-5 years), we'll continue to build games, casinos, and speculative products.
This sounds uninspiring. But it has two main important consequences.

1) This will ultimately lead to hundreds of millions of users to install wallets and get uncomfortable with the UX.

2) This will force the tech (especially scaling) to mature.
Once we've achieved these two goals, phase 2 begins. In phase 2, products that serve real economic activities / integrated with the real economy will be built and flourish.
Right now, such products barely exist. @terra_money comes to mind. But this is the kind of products that I really look forward to. They are more economically sustainable, and create more value.
In a way, we saw the same 2 phases with #BTC. In the early days, BTC was primarily a speculative asset. Nowadays, it still is, but it's transitioning into the 2nd phase where it's considered an 'emerging store of value'.
Matter of fact, arguably the most important component of capital markets is lending / credit / fixed income. In TradFi, this function is largely manipulated by central banks. In DeFi, it's driven by speculative activities aka phase 1.
In hindsight, phase 1 has also played a critical role in bootstrapping the lending / credit / fixed income market in DeFi. This will pave the way for phase 2.
Moreover, in phase 2, I don't expect DeFi to become a 'parallel financial system'. Instead, I expect traditional financial services companies to build their products in DeFi. Just like traditional media companies moved their business onto the Internet.
If 'the Internet' existed before 'finance' did, I think that's exactly how finance would've been built. On open protocols. Rather in wall gardens.

At the end of phase 2, the 'De' in DeFi will just be removed, and it will just be 'finance'.

More from Tech

A common misunderstanding about Agile and “Big Design Up Front”:

There’s nothing in the Agile Manifesto or Principles that states you should never have any idea what you’re trying to build.

You’re allowed to think about a desired outcome from the beginning.

It’s not Big Design Up Front if you do in-depth research to understand the user’s problem.

It’s not BDUF if you spend detailed time learning who needs this thing and why they need it.

It’s not BDUF if you help every team member know what success looks like.

Agile is about reducing risk.

It’s not Agile if you increase risk by starting your sprints with complete ignorance.

It’s not Agile if you don’t research.

Don’t make the mistake of shutting down critical understanding by labeling it Bg Design Up Front.

It would be a mistake to assume this research should only be done by designers and researchers.

Product management and developers also need to be out with the team, conducting the research.

Shared Understanding is the key objective


Big Design Up Front is a thing to avoid.

Defining all the functionality before coding is BDUF.

Drawing every screen and every pixel is BDUF.

Promising functionality (or delivery dates) to customers before development starts is BDUF.

These things shouldn’t happen in Agile.

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