Giving Power Back To the 99% Of the Population; How DeFi Is Reimagining Finance The world of web3 and Metaverse is evolving, and India is just getting started in it. One belief echoed by the experts is that DeFi the future of finance.
By Paromita Gupta •
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The infamous collapse of FTX and Silicon Valley Bank brought to light the myth that one's money was secure by opting for the traditional route. The underlying reality was and remains that money is safe everywhere and nowhere; it depends on the technology utilized for safekeeping.
And the latest candidate to provide us with a sense of security when it comes to one's hard-earned money is the Decentralized Finance technology, popularly known as DeFi. And yes, the industry does feel that DeFi is the answer to avoid any potential banking and cryptocurrency trading crisis.
The world of web3 and Metaverse is evolving, and India is just getting started in it. During a seven-member panel discussion on "Defi 2.0: What impact DeFi technology is making and how companies are embarking on the DeFi 2.0" at Entrepreneur India's Web 3 Summit in Bangalore, one belief echoed by the experts was DeFi is the future of finance.
Shashi Pal Singh, COO, Antier Solutions, in a concise manner, defines what DeFi is all about, "Defi is made up of two words- decentralized and finance. Decentralized means everything has a trustless application that moves to smart contracts. A smart contract is a set of rules, conditions or algorithms that is automatically executed without involving anyone. Smart contract is moving to the second layer that is fractionalizing of the assets. And the third step is that it reduces the gap between demand and supply."
Talking in the context of the FTX collapse, Udomsak Rakwongwan, Co-founder, Forward, shared that for any trading platform, trustless as a feature is a top need.
Equitable distribution is also counted as a value only DeFi can provide. Vikram Tanna, CEO, Mzaalo, shared how "the Defi applications will only accelerate the process where it is required to drive the equitable distribution of value creation. It is really going to be important in terms of how we use DeFi applications to trigger and disrupt industries." Tanna further adds that DeFi is playing a pivotal role in the media and content ecosystem and believes that content needs the backbone called blockchain to be truly disruptive and that artificial intelligence will play a significant catalyst in it.
But the adoption rate of DeFi and other disruptive technology is at its nascency. Swapnil Pawar, the founder of Newrl, believes that the problem isn't the technology but rather the transition and regulatory comfort for users along the way.
Harpreet Singh Maan, CEO and Co-founder, Blocklime, mirrors the opinion. "We still have billions of people unbank in the world because over the years we can actually get rockets to the moon, but we can't get bank accounts in Africa. We can get internet messages across the world in seconds, but if I want to send money, it takes me days. So, it shows you there are inefficiencies, challenges and problems and there is new technology and new way to pick it up and say 'Hey! Can we actually look into this new concept and maybe reimagine finance?'" Maan shared.
The insights from the panel have surely increased the audience's knowledge quotient about DeFi, taking them one step closer towards embracing web3 and the underway technological revolution.
