Decentralized Finance (DeFi) is on the top of the crypto industry’s trending list this year and for good reason. The value of DeFi tokens have been growing precipitously, and in the last weekend, its total value crossed into the $2 billion territory. According to DeFi Market Cap, that number has risen to a total of almost $2.5 billion today on June 10.
As the popularity of DeFi grows, Bitcoin Malaysia, led by Colbert Low and Jason Chew, brought leaders and pioneers in the DeFi space to its global audience with Southeast Asia DeFi Week, a 10-hour experience spread across five days from June 1 to June 5. Kicking off the week with MakerDAO, the event also welcomed representatives from Melon Protocol, BitGo, Aave and Kyber and offered incisive views into the world of DeFi. Watch the replays of the event if you missed them right here or on SCN’s Facebook page.
MakerDAO and Kyber Network are familiar names in Asia especially, with the former known for its DAI stablecoin and Maker protocol, while the latter has delved successfully into facilitating decentralized liquidity at better rates across the almost innumerable variety of tokens in the market at present. BitGo presented a solution that facilitates improved flexibility and interoperability between tokens that are built on different networks via wrapping mechanisms.
DeFi protocols and tech fundamentally try to solve the issues of users’ lack of control over their assets, the unnecessary intermediaries and costs users have to pay for when making transactions and the absence of transparency in processes. Melon Protocol’s Mona El Isa introduced decentralized asset management that would ensure higher profitability and accessibility to investments for both asset managers and investors.
Founder Stani Kulechov introduced Aave’s money market protocol and during his Q&A session, a viewer touched on the vulnerability of DeFi protocols as seen by the recent hack on DeFi lending protocol Lendf.me where hackers took advantage of a security flaw via the ERC-777 token standard. While DeFi is a rapidly-growing sector, there is still much work to be done on tightening security on these protocols to ensure that they are impervious to malicious attacks on DeFi platforms.
As reported previously, the number of DeFi platforms existent in the market grew 200% between Q1 2019 and Q1 2020. A majority of DeFi projects are built on the Ethereum blockchain network, which saw a 778% increase in DeFi dapps.
You may also want to read: Digital Week Online: Post-Event Highlights
