Decentralized Finance

Luzius Meisser
Luzius Meisser
Computer-scientist, founder, father, economist.

Refind helps you get a little bit smarter every day. The most relevant links for you, every morning in your inbox. Start with this hand-curated series of 5 time-tested articles from around the web, and we’ll take it from there.

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Decentralized Finance
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This deep dive introduces you to the anarcho-capitalist world of decentralized finance (DeFi) that is currently being built within the Ethereum system. This is a world in which anyone can print dollars (DAI), anyone can list any currency or security for public trading (uniswap), in which savers can still earn positive interest rates (compound.finance), and in which billions are locked up in «Yield Farming» constructs with cute emojis as ticker symbols. Decentralized finance thrives on good ideas being copied and refined, letting systems worth hundreds of millions emerge and collapse in a matter of days. Enjoy my curated menu of insightful articles on the topic.

  • Maker for Dummies: A Plain English Explanation of the Dai… and 4 other articles
  • Average reading time: 5 minutes
  • Topics covered: decentralization, crypto, makers, coding, stablecoin
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  • You want to catch up on a topic that has been in the news lately.
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Glad to see you made it all the way through this Deep Dive. We hope you found it useful and can put some of the insights to good use in your own daily life.

How does it work?

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Day 5
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Deep Dives are carefully hand-curated series of time-tested articles and videos from around the web.

We’ll guide you through, one link per day, every morning in your inbox.

Deep Dives come in bites that are short enough to fit in your day...

...but add up to a satisfying learning experience.

As a starter, we will have a look at DAI, a cryptocurrency that is pegged to the dollar. This peg is achieved with a clever, decentralized mechanism. Anyone can print DAI, but only if they provide collateral. DAI is one of the main building blocks of DeFi.

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Next on the menu is the decentralized exchange Uniswap. Anyone can add new assets for trading to Uniswap. Also, anyone is free to contribute to the liquidity pools needed for the market making, participating in the 0.3% trading fee in return.

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Today, we will have a broader look at the DeFi space and introduce the notion of "Yield Farming".

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Finally, I'd like to provide you with a concrete example of how smart contracts can be used to automatically enforce financial contracts, in this case the drag-along clause typically found in shareholder agreements. At the same time, this post also describes some of the limitations of smart contracts.

Luzius Meisser

Hello again. Glad to see you made it all the way through this Deep Dive. I hope you found it useful and can put some of the insights to good use in your own daily life. 


Bonus link: If you enjoyed the previous links, you might also enjoy reading about «flash loans», a type of loans that do not exist in the traditional world. Flash loans are repaid in the same transaction as they are granted. So if you don't repay them, you will retroactively not get them either. This creates all kinds of fun opportunities.


To help you keep up with the latest on the topic, Refind will serve you relevant new links on it in your daily picks whenever available.

Luzius Meisser