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Finance Without the Institutions

Most financial activity in the world runs through institutions. Banks hold deposits and make loans. Stock exchanges match buyers and sellers of shares. Brokerages execute trades on behalf of clients. Insurance companies pool risk. These institutions have existed for centuries and they perform genuinely useful functions. But they also charge fees, impose access requirements, make decisions about who qualifies for their services, operate during limited hours, and sit in the middle of transactions between parties who, in principle, could deal with each other directly.

Decentralised Finance, almost universally shortened to DeFi, is an attempt to rebuild financial services using smart contracts on public blockchains rather than institutions operated by companies. The goal is a financial system that is accessible to anyone with an internet connection, that operates continuously without human gatekeepers, and whose rules are encoded in publicly readable code rather than in corporate policies or legal agreements. Whether DeFi has succeeded in this goal, partially succeeded, or created a new set of problems alongside a new set of opportunities, is what this course examines honestly and in full.

A Note on How This Course Is Written

DeFi is a topic that attracts strong opinions in both directions. Some describe it as the most significant financial innovation in decades. Others describe it as an unregulated casino dressed in technical language. This course does not take either position. It describes what DeFi is, how it works, where it has delivered on its promises, where it has not, and what the real risks are. The aim throughout is to give you enough accurate information to form your own view.

What You Will Learn

Chapter 1: What DeFi Actually Is

The honest definition of DeFi, what it has and has not replaced, and the

gap between the vision and the current reality.

Chapter 2:  Decentralised Exchanges

How DEXs work, what automated market makers are, and how they compare

to centralised exchanges in practice.

Chapter 3: Lending and Borrowing

How DeFi lending protocols function, what overcollateralisation means,

and who actually uses these services and why.

Chapter 4: Yield and Risk

Where DeFi yields come from, why high yields are almost always

accompanied by significant risks, and how to read the two together.

Chapter 5: Smart Contract Failures

A factual account of how DeFi protocols have been exploited, what the

common attack types are, and what the historical scale of losses has been.

Chapter 6: Systemic Risk in DeFi

How individual risks connect and amplify across the DeFi ecosystem,

and what this means for anyone participating in it.