DeFi: Will It EVER Go Mainstream? In-Industry Experts Weigh In

DeFi: Is it the future of finance? Or too volatile to become mainstream? A panel of experts gives us their thoughts.

The panel of experts didn’t all agree on the future direction of DeFi. Some, like Anderson Mccutcheon, the CEO and Founder of Chains.com isn’t feeling the vibe. “DeFi is headed downward. The future of retail finance lies within systems that are regulated, secure and provide users with products and services that they can easily understand. The future and present for high-net-worth individuals (HNWI) and institutional finance are with multi-trillion dollar entities that power our economy today. Real market demand for DeFi is only going to shrink.” 

Others are more upbeat. Dmitry Tolok, VP of Growth and Co-Founder of Primex Finance. He thinks that DeFi will not only go mainstream but replace existing finance.

“DeFi is headed to becoming the new standard of how people exchange value. The mission of DeFi is to decentralize ownership and eliminate middlemen. With more and more financial products moving towards decentralized environments and the growing sophistication of financial use cases, it will eventually replace the majority of existing financial services.”

Asaf Naim is the CEO and Co-Founder at Kirobo. “As I see it, DeFi is likely to become ubiquitous in the coming decades once the issues of scalability, usability, and security have been addressed. At this time DeFi is used by a small number of people who have in-depth knowledge and indeed the barrier to entry is high due to the knowledge required. It will take time for the industry to lower the barriers to entry and for DeFi to go mainstream.”

DeFi to gain traction

Eric Chen is the CEO and co-founder of Injective Labs, core contributor to Injective. “DeFi is continuing to gain major traction from everyday users and institutions despite the overarching macro conditions right now. The initial iteration was largely focused on relatively basic financial primitives. However, now we are witnessing a major expansion within the sector in which more sophisticated applications such as structured products are becoming increasingly commonplace.”

Chen says the next stage of DeFi evolution will focus on embedding Web3 powered products into everyday applications. “For instance, you may see a mainstream app or website with fiat on-ramps but the backend is entirely governed by smart contracts. I fundamentally believe that this is necessary in order to reach the masses who may not be familiar with the often complicated crypto native products. This is a major focus for Injective now as well since many apps launched on top of Injective such as Helix are creating gateways to onboard everyday users and institutions who may be new to crypto.”

Bear market problems

Diane Dai is the Co-Founder of DODO. “We are currently in a DeFi bear market, yet decentralized trading users continue to increase. It is an unstoppable force on the eve of innovation. A lot of the value has…