The Decentralized Finance (DeFi) ecosystem has witnessed enormous growth and adoption over the last several years. DeFi’s Total Value Locked (TVL) has skyrocketed from nothing in 2018 to over $200 billion in 2022. Ethereum alone has over 4 million users, with an 8x surge in 2021 alone. The excitement around DeFi is palpable. Young investors are inspired by their peers’ historic success, while others wonder what this means for the future of finance. DeFi has been largely successful. However, its inability to include some of traditional finance’s more appealing features has kept it from completely breaking into the public. Take fixed interest rates, for example, which are almost non-existent in DeFi. Retail borrowers and lenders actively search for fixed interest rates to build wealth steadily over time. To avoid this, DeFi’s floating interest rates create a riskier environment that, while lucrative, is unsuitable for the average investor. In addition, there are concerns about collateralization, liquidity, and security. Even though these assets have a lot of upside potential, moving them around and converting them to various products may be difficult. Furthermore, investors may encounter many roadblocks. Scams, hacking, and digital theft remain major roadblocks for DeFi. NFTs: The Unusual Solution! Most people associate NFTs with freshly minted bitcoin billionaires splurging $250,000 for a cartoon ape. In 2021, NFTs were highly ...
