Coinbase Product Manager: DeFi to change market interactions; how will Ethereum benefit?

At the Coinbase Winter 2019 hackathon, the company's product manager Jacob Horne described DeFi as an opportunity that could change how individuals interact with markets.

"DeFi, or decentralized finance, is an essential part of an open financial system. DeFi tools are censorship-resistant, unbiased, programmable, and available to anyone with a smartphone. For this hackathon, we're focusing on bringing DeFi to the world."

657 million locked in DeFi, mostly platforms built on Ethereum.

According to DeFi Pulse, a site that analyzes and ranks DeFi platforms, the total value locked in DeFi has reached $657 million in Ethereum.

MakerDao, Synthetix, and Compound, all of which are based on Ethereum, are ranked as the three biggest DeFi platforms currently in the market.

"DeFi is an opportunity to build financial infrastructure that spans the world, is open to everybody, and starts to change how we interact with markets."

DeFi is not limited to lending; the Lightning Network of Bitcoin is considered a part of decentralized finance as it enables users to send and receive payments instantly in a distributed ecosystem.

Developers have found it difficult to make DEXes and decentralized payment platforms as seamless as centralized alternatives, which have led other aspects of DeFi to struggle.

Over the past two years, the DeFi market grew from $10 million to nearly $660 million in Ethereum value alone.

Still, there are significant risks involved in DeFi since all platforms are decentralized.