SVET Reports
DeFi 2020
As we begin to move into 2020's unknowns we carry with us some of our unfulfilled hopes and vague expectations. One of those was / is DeFi.
In their report dubbed "DeFi #3 - 2020: The Borderless State of DeFi" published Jan 22 Binance noted "Ethereum-based DeFi’s user-side remains small, with an average number of more than 40,000 monthly users, and 90% of these users are using decentralized exchanges."
That saying, borrowing / lending platforms (ex. Compound) and synthetic assets (Synthetix) had substantially expanded their user base to the end of 2019 (to 21 and 10 thousands accordingly).
Still, speculators trading on decentralized exchanges (Kyber, Uniswap) represent, basically, DeFi industry's core users base. That what brings volatility to this market and explains sharp drop in its activity which most platforms experienced during September - October (number of monthly unique users dropped from 60 to 40).
On the other hand, much talked about in 2017 prediction markets' performance has been absolutely dismal despite short lived spike at the beginning of 2019. According to DappRadar there are currently only 20 active users of Augur, which represents this sector almost solely.
Augur's UI has always been awful but, obviously, that's not enough to explain its spectacular demise. Active traders are simply too few in numbers and too reluctant to take on additional risks of "unknown unknowns" to bet on exotic instruments leveraging outcomes of wider variety of events outside of "traditional" crypto-assets price movements.
Binance authors conclude their report by saying: "Once some technical and legal challenges are solved, we expect a meteoric growth in the decentralized financial industry, likely to attract individuals and capital beyond the scope of the existing crypto-industry."
Apparently, "legal challenges" are bound to only increase in the observable future. Therefore, addressing technical issues and actively engaging significantly larger part of crypto-community, which still keeps itself away from DeFi, are two chances left to explore for DLT entrepreneurs.