DeFi
Decentralized finance: financial services — lending, trading, saving — rebuilt as smart contracts with no bank in the middle.
DeFi (decentralized finance) recreates the financial system — banks, exchanges, money markets — as open smart contracts. Anyone with a wallet can lend, borrow, trade, and earn yield without an account, approval, or waiting period.
How it works
Users deposit assets into smart contracts. A lending pool, for example, pays interest set by supply and demand, enforces prices with oracles, and liquidates undercollateralized positions automatically. Everything is visible on-chain.
Why it’s decentralizing
DeFi removes the gatekeeper: no credit check, no country restrictions, no bail-in risk. The trade-off is that you manage your own security and risk. W3D measures the assets flowing through these protocols as part of capital on-chain.
Related terms
CeFi, DEX, Liquidity, Stablecoin, Yield, Staking