Название: Understanding DeFi: The Roles, Tools, Risks, and Rewards of Decentralized Finance (Final)
Автор: Alexandra Damsker
Издательство: O’Reilly Media, Inc.
Год: 2024
Страниц: 250
Язык: английский
Формат: pdf, epub (true), mobi
Размер: 10.1 MB

Decentralized finance (DeFi) is a rapidly growing field in fintech, having grown from $700 million to $100 billion over the past three years alone. But the lack of reliable information makes this area both risky and murky. In this practical book, experienced securities attorney Alexandra Damsker explains DeFi's role in both blockchain and finance.

Ideal for developers looking to build decentralized applications (DApps), this book compares DeFi to traditional bank-led fintech and explains why DeFi is exploding in interest and popularity. You'll explore the growing array of DApps and platforms in various categories, including their benefits and drawbacks, and learn how DeFi tools work together from the perspective of both users and developers.

With this book, you will:
• Learn how DeFi fits into the blockchain and fintech worlds
• Understand why it's important to move beyond the banking system
• Explore the tools for building a useful, functional DeFi application
• Learn the risks, benefits, regulatory concerns, and unresolved issues in this nascent and fast-growing industry
• See which technologies are well-positioned to be incorporated into DeFi blockchains in the near future
• Assess your own risk level to determine which strategies are most appropriate

The architectural base is the structural base of the platform. In blockchain, this is fundamentally the block-based recordkeeping system. Beyond that, enormous variation exists. A few of these variations can include languages, smart contracts, and/or software libraries. You can use any language that works—and people do. These include C++ (Bitcoin), Python (Hyperledger), Solidity (Ethereum), Rust (Solana), and Substrate (Polkadot). Smart contracts are the programs that drive the whole system. To execute a smart contract, the language must be Turing complete, or able to execute on a trigger and then stop automatically. Some chains, like the Bitcoin blockchain, are not Turing complete, while others, like Ethereum, are Turing complete. Most chains are Turing complete at this point in time. Libraries are generally as flexible as languages. Most platforms have an existing library and software development kit (SDK) to ensure easy and interoperable application development.

Who Is This Book for, and What Will You Learn?
This book is for anyone, whether from a business or technical background, who needs a grounding in the blockchain and DeFi space and wants to build compliantly and productively. It is also for anyone who wants to learn how to operate protocols or invest money in the DeFi space. Finally, it is for anyone who wants a great explanation of how things work in blockchain and/or finance, without getting bogged down in acronyms and jargon. You don’t need to have any prior knowledge to use this book.

The book is not intended to be a detailed, language-specific, step-by-step analysis and implementation guide for building DeFi protocols for a specific set of requirements. After reading this book, you should have the understanding and knowledge to help design, build, and operate successfully within the DeFi arena, however it progresses. After reading this book, you should also have ideas of what works in DeFi and what doesn’t, where risks lie, and where you are comfortable operating and even innovating. Users need to know what questions to ask developers when considering new protocols, and many need the knowledge contained in this book to understand what to ask—or if the protocols even make sense or are just failures that haven’t operated long enough to fail. Tutorials are great for working through specific needs, but a fundamental understanding of these core concepts is needed to allow teams to build correctly and compliantly—two things sorely missing in the current and already failed protocols in DeFi.