@amadeobrands, I’ve seen a lot of interest in Swissborg, https://swissborg.com/ recently and looking at the site I wonder how ‘true’ DeFi it is. Seems to use traditional exchanges. Notice that it has been referred to already but think is still worth amention
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Thank you guys! Appreciate your help
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atomicloans
Atomic.loans
Lending
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Hey Amadeo! What do you think about https://oikos.cash/ DeFI protocol built on Tron, it’s top 5 on dappradar, but not in your list?
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Hello together,
DeFiChain (DFI) is now listed on CMC…watch out for them 
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I seem to have a hard time convincing myself to bring my crypto out of cold storage, but have done so with some. just getting into this part of crypto and was wondering what you think about celcius? they are staking regular cryptos like litecoin and steller and xrp and have really decent aprs. Is there any problems with this platform I should know about?
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What about Rivex: https://www.rivex.io/ a project I’m starting to hear about quite a bit these days.
Correct me if I understand this wrongly:
Rivex is a protocol that will get built on top of Wanchain building block, but that will also be able to interact with other blockchain networks such as Ethereum and Bitcoin (since Wanchain’s USP is interoperability).
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The DMM Ecosystem looks like it is using Eth and Dai to acquire real world assets. All older model vehicles from what i see. The assets pay out interest which is paid back to the DMM ecosystem.
Link is below:
I think crypto.com or nexus are more centralized platforms, when the market crashed last March, i had loans on :
1- Maker - was small loan for test purpose
2- Crypto.com - middle amount loan
3- nexo - i had large loan.
When the market crashed, maker automatically liquidated the whole amount when ether reached 150$, while crypto.com and nexo where liquidating per piece (per small %) of collateral until the end of the crash.
maker 100% liquidated
Nexo 50% liquidated
crypto.com 1% liquidated
Nexo and crypto.com when market crash was happening they kept contacting me per email every 10 minutes, informing me about the market situation and advising me to watch my collateral (repay part of the loan if possible) to avoid a full liquidation in case the price went deeper.
Was a very good experience where i learned a lot.
Defi is products, like compound and maker are great, just everyone has to watch out when taking loans, avoid large one since the market is not stable yet, and use it only for a short term loans.
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Hi Amadeo, thank you for the great content you produce, its fab.
what do you think about Dolomite (Dex) semi automated process? it claims to settle 3 trades per sec using Loopring 2.0, with 3.0 it will be 200 per sec. (that’s pretty good right) I like the sound of their matching engine and security seems to be at the forefront of their mind.
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@amadeobrands how exactly would you propose this? Say you had a willing volunteer, but he had no prior knowledge or skills; only a shared philosophical view?
And for the Defi tools, the 0x Dex called Matcha was just announced recently. Using “Uniswap, Kyber, and Oasis in tandem with 0x Mesh, to offer the best liquidity on the market…” Matcha strives to make it easy for users by providing info on slippage, transaction fees, and recent price moves. DEFI-nitely worth checking out! 
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Hello Amadeos!
First of all I want to say a big thank you for such a grate DEFI 101 course, it specially yor last video ’ Defi as a financial Lego’ was so exiting content of information!!!
I want to bring up to pay your attention to some Defi projects:
- AAVE protocol
*Band protocol - Curve finance
*Balancer finance
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I wish, I was that advanced to see what you need. I’ll develop that vision and insight soon. I looked at the top 50 DeFi Projects in 2020. I think Omisego for payments and Bodhi for the prediction market.
This assignment has shown me I have a lot of studying to do. I need to be totally immerse in this space full time like Ivan has been telling everyone. I’m up for the challenge.
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Band and Balancer seem to have a large opportunity especially Band.
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Hi folks, if you allow me I would like to start a discussion in order for me to better understand DeFi. I am on the last chapter of DeFi 101 - Compound and here are my impressions so far. Don’t get me wrong, some of the things DeFi offers blow my mind and i really like it, but i am having hard time understanding the end game here. So here i begin.
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Who is actually DeFi for? It seems so complex that even an educated person could get lost in all these protocols and tooling. Also, the space changes so fast that it feels like a full time job to follow it and be up to date.
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Is it built only to serve long term crypto hodlers? Is it for traders? Is it for speculators? Hedge funds?
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How does it reach people who actually need a loan? If i can take over-collateralized loan, it means I can actually afford what I want to buy, I just don’t want to sell my crypto. But let’s be honest. People who need loans cannot over collateralize.
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Who’s gonna actually put their money in it? I mean money that you can’t afford to lose. Right now all my money that i cannot afford to lose is in a centralized bank, but i know that if it goes bust, I am insured by the government and they’ll pay me back. Which means, I am ultimately placing a long bet on the government and society. I would be very scared putting money I can’t afford to lose in a protocol where it could get hacked or I can make a ‘procedural’ mistake, or even it will get so updated in 1 year that I won’t know what to do with my money after. My feeling is that only people as educated as Amadeo Brands would do that, but this is a lot less than 1% of the people on the planet.
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I can never see the ‘average guy’ using it one day. Some people have hard time understanding a basic high yield savings account in a not very common centralized bank. To give you an example: people still prefer to hold their money in a common centralized bank with 0.01% interest rate as opposed to in an online bank with customer service and 3% interest, because it is more complicated and less common to do the latter.
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Also, why has DeFi space skyrocketed in the past 3 months. Any particular catalyst? Who uses it today? Who puts all those money in it? I can’t understand.
Thank you for reading and I hope someone could clear my head on those items. 
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I’d like to ask something that maybe a little bit a bit unpopular. I see great potential in the whole concept of open finance, I think it is a step in the right direction towards decentralization and support the notion of correctly using them to bank the unbanked, however I do see that there is potential to fall in the same trap the current economic system is stuck into by replicating the same instruments that have caused the economy big headaches. I am referring to the concept of futures , derivatives, options and swaps specifically:
Please take a look at this visualization of the money & markets currently available in the world:
Is astonishing to see in one visualization how the whole world’s money supply and assets are not sufficient to liquidate the derivatives market. My concern is as follows, remember the economic crisis of 2008? collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps played a major role.
I am not an economist and certainly not an expert in the topic but really interested to engage in constructive debate on your opinions regarding the following:
- What happens if everyone at the same time liquidate their instruments?
- How to ensure that there are enough assets to liquidate debts?
- Who wins and who loses in this zero sum game?
- Can this be a massive ponzi scheme?
- How is deFi preventing a similar scenario to the 2008 crisis?
Don’t get me wrong, I am a full supporter of blockchain and descentralization, but getting the feeling that some DeFi products can fall in the dangerous trap of misusing debt instruments and in the long run cause harm to the whole ecosystem.
Please share with me your opinions and let me know what you think, I may be missing a key concept that I am not able to grasp in order to understand how DeFi can solve our current economic problems by design.
Thanks in advance.
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@przpgo and @pazzi I am also hesitant about this space and struggling to see the value in it. What good is it for me to be able to borrow DAI if I can’t pay my mortgage or car note with stable coins for example? Leveraged trading is one good use case but even Ivan’s webinar says make your money from developing, don’t trade or you’ll ruin your finances and relationships… 
It seems like a lot of greed and I don’t want to see the crypto world as a whole get blamed for this greed if it happens to cause a huge bubble of complex debt instruments that runs wild like the banksters.
I’d like to see a little more depth and participation in this discussion from our course mates and instructor, not just a), people naming the same popular defi tools over and over (never bothered to read this thread or even glance at the spreadsheet) or b), thoughtful posts from some people who are hungry for knowledge, BUT these posts go unanswered.
This course is very important but I feel like we are only scratching the surface here and by the end of defi 201 I am concerned that both courses will have flown by and I still won’t feel like an expert here or even be able to teach others (normies, friends, family) anything substantial that I learned. I guess it will just take 6 months of immersion before I suddenly get it.
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Yes! This! So much this.
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great answer @cryptologos. So i am not alone in wondering what this thing is about. Ivan keeps saying on the channel that Compound, Kyber and such protocols will eat the banks. But how? I just finished the Maker video in Defi 101 and the collateral has to be 150% of what you actually borrow. LOL
The only use case of this, from what I have heard of, is when you are a ETH whale for example and don’t wanna sell your ETH, but want to spend some money. One of the reason you may not wanna sell ETH (talking about US only, as I am only familiar how things work here) is because you create a taxable event when you sell (not a CPA, just common knowledge).
But this doesn’t mean you actually need a loan. You are pretty much borrowing from yourself money that you already have. SO i can only see crypto whales benefiting from this industry and coin speculators who are hunting for the next 100x bag. I would love @amadeobrands to get into this discussion. I am very curious who actually uses Defi and where all the money is flowing in from. Right now there are $2bn locked in DeFi.
Amadeo, please clear our heads here What are we missing? We must be missing something for sure.
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When I can use stable coins to pay off my mortgage or student loans or car note, I will definitely be more interested in defi as something useful to me. Until then, it’s all about redirecting my savings from traditional bank account into lending with defi for a slightly better interest rate. With small amounts (under $100k) I won’t have any exciting gains.
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