DeFi Explained: Decentralized Finance Protocols

Decentralized Finance (DeFi) replaces traditional financial intermediaries — banks, brokers, exchanges — with open smart contracts that anyone can use permissionlessly. Since 2020 DeFi has grown from a niche experiment to billions of dollars in on-chain value, spanning decentralized exchanges (DEXs), lending and borrowing protocols, liquid staking, stablecoins, and yield strategies.

Unlike CeFi products, DeFi protocols are governed by code and — increasingly — by token-holder DAOs. Understanding the whitepapers behind these protocols reveals exactly how fee models, liquidations, oracle dependencies, and governance work. Browse the explanations below to go beyond the marketing and read what the builders actually built.

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