Decentralised finance (DeFi) refers to financial applications run on a permissionless blockchain, such as Ethereum, that use smart contracts automating the provision of financial services without the need for intermediaries. DeFi is only a small share of the crypto market at present with less than 100 Bio $ locked in DeFi protocols at the beginning of 2023, but it has experienced a steady growth over the last few years (despite a significant drop in 2022) and the number of live DeFi protocols is increasing.

In terms of activities, DeFi is mainly used at present as an additional way to speculate on cryptoassets and obtain leverage (e.g. investment in cryptoassets on decentralised crypto exchanges (DEX), automated collateralised crypto lending and staking services). However, DeFi protocols can also potentially be used to provide traditional financial services (such as lending, derivatives, insurance, crowdfunding…) in a more efficient manner, based on crypto or tokenised assets and the use of smart contracts and without the use of financial intermediaries. In addition, the technical features underlying DeFi (smart contracts, composability) and some services provided on DeFi platforms (e.g. flash loans, automated market making) are quite innovative and could be taken advantage of in the future in the traditional financial sector or to reap the benefits of digital assets and the potentialities of Web3.

DeFi activities also give rise to new risks. The risks associated with unregulated crypto activities (market, liquidity, counterparty, AML risks…) and the growing interactions with the traditional financial system (due to the growing involvement of institutional investors in crypto and banks serving the crypto ecosystem) may indeed be amplified by the pseudo-anonymity on DeFi platforms and certain specific features of DeFi platforms. These include the automaticity of smart contracts and the use of oracles to connect to outside sources of data. In addition the decentralized governance of DeFi platforms based on governance tokens is a further source of potential vulnerability, although most DeFi platforms remain fairly centralized at present, as shown notably by BIS studies.

A further issue is that DeFi will not be explicitly covered by the upcoming MiCA framework, thus extending the period during which these activities will remain mostly unregulated. Access to DeFi platforms can also be challenging, as interacting directly with DeFi applications requires computer programming skills.