Decentralized Finance (DeFi) Infrastructure

About this Course

Decentralized Finance: The Way forward for Finance is a set of 4 programs taught by Campbell R. Harvey (Professor of Finance on the Fuqua Faculty of Enterprise, Duke College, and a Analysis Affiliate of the Nationwide Bureau of Financial Analysis) that concentrate on decentralized finance (DeFi). On this first course, we start by exploring the origins of DeFi and take a broad historic view from the earliest barter economies, akin to the primary peer-to-peer exchanges of bartering, to current day. The course additionally appears at historic examples of cash having worth regardless that it isn’t formally backed.

We then concentrate on the important thing infrastructure parts: blockchain, cryptocurrency, sensible contracts, oracles, stablecoins and decentralized purposes (or dApps). This contains dialogue of the mechanics of the Ethereum and Bitcoin blockchains together with cryptographic hashing. Subsequent, we concentrate on the particular issues that DeFi is designed to resolve: inefficiency (expensive, sluggish, and insecure as we speak), restricted entry (1.7 billion are unbanked), opacity (we have to belief regulators to watch banks and the regulators have combined data), centralized management (monetary system is oligopolistic imposing increased charges than we might have in a aggressive market) and lack of interoperability (it’s tough to maneuver funds from one monetary establishment to a different as we speak). The course closes by exploring lots of the myths in regards to the crypto area.

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN

• Articulate the historical past and origins of decentralized finance

• Outline the important thing parts of decentralized finance’s infrastructure

• Clarify which issues decentralized finance is designed to resolve and the way

• Determine myths or frequent misconceptions about decentralized finance

SKILLS YOU WILL GAIN

• Cryptography
• Good Contract
• Decentralized Protocols
• governance
• Blockchain Mechanics

Syllabus – What you’ll study from this course

WEEK

1

2 hours to finish

The Historical past of Decentralized Finance

This module gives a historic perspective of alternate starting with early barter, specie forex (backed by, e.g., gold), fiat forex and digital transfers. The module introduces a number of the key issues which have arisen with the present system. It closes with the introduction to Satoshi Nakamoto’s well-known 2008 paper which launched cryptocurrency.

WEEK

2

2 hours to finish

DeFi Foundations

This module introduces the important thing foundations for DeFi, beginning with the mechanics of blockchain together with cryptographic hashing. The module then explores the innovation of sensible contracting – a key ingredient for DeFi. There may be additionally a dialogue of the variations between the primary cryptos and stablecoins.

WEEK

3

1 hour to finish

Issues DeFi Solves

This module explores the important thing issues with as we speak’s legacy monetary system which embody: inefficiency (expensive, sluggish, and insecure transactions); restricted entry (many can not entry banks and many who have financial institution accounts discover it tough to get loans); opacity (it’s unclear how wholesome our business monetary establishments are); centralized management (present system is dominated by oligopolies that push costs increased than aggressive costs) and interoperability (problem in shifting funds throughout totally different legacy monetary establishments).

WEEK

4

1 hour to finish

DeFi Myths and Info

The ultimate module explores numerous totally different myths together with: all cryptocurrencies are nameless; blockchains are routinely hacked; quantum computing will destroy all blockchain primarily based currencies; and the crypto ecosystem is so small that it’s unlikely to compete with legacy monetary establishments.