DeFi feels a lot more serious than it did a few years ago.
The "EZ MODE" version we all loved and adored involved chasing high emissions, the way that people load their carts during a Black Friday Sale. Rotating between farms and soaking up the ultra high APY's may be a massive dopamine rush, but not a sustainable one at that. We only had short windows of time to take advantage of these gifts from the crypto Gods.
Despite the depressive "bear market crawl" we've endured for the past 2-3 years, a lot more interesting work is happening underneath: some of the most cracked teams are birthing better lending markets into existence, which involve some of these core attributes:
- Cleaner risk isolation and having top tier security measures in place (taking recent advancements in AI into account)
- Vaults that can route capital with more intent than a user manually clicking through markets
- Intuitive, easy to use UI experience
- A wide array of market types to appeal to a variety of users, without diluting and offering TOO many chains or market options
- Overall better collateral design with higher LTV's to make functionality like Looping worthwhile for users and LP's
If DeFi is going to keep growing, capital needs to be more useful without making risk harder to understand.
That's where I think the industry is heading: less noise & degeneracy, more useful infrastructure, and dynamic products that make capital work without asking users to babysit every position.