Possible Outline

  1. Intro

    • Ground the reader in today’s financial landscape: banks, fintech apps, and the trust model they rely on.

    • Briefly highlight the promise of DeFi: open, programmable, permissionless finance.

    • Position DeFi as the “onchain evolution” of traditional finance, much like your last post framed onchain social as the evolution of social media.

  2. Useful Definitions

    • What is Finance (TradFi)?

    • What is DeFi?

    • Key terms: smart contracts, liquidity pools, yield farming, governance tokens.

  3. Historical Evolution

    • Early DeFi experiments: MakerDAO (DAI), Uniswap, Compound.

    • 2020’s “DeFi Summer” boom — experimentation and excess.

    • Institutional interest and regulatory pushback.

  4. Key Protocols & Models

    • Uniswap: automated market maker innovation.

    • MakerDAO: stablecoin collateral and governance.

    • Aave/Compound: lending and borrowing.

    • L2 ecosystems: how scaling (Arbitrum, Optimism) is shaping DeFi.

  5. Challenges & Risks

    • Smart contract risk, hacks, and exploits.

    • Regulatory uncertainty.

    • User experience (still too complex for mainstream).

  6. Framework for Evaluation

    Similar to your “evaluation framework” in the last post. Possible criteria:

    • Decentralization (governance, control, custody).

    • Transparency (audits, on-chain data).

    • Composability (how easily it plugs into the DeFi ecosystem).

    • Sustainability (tokenomics, incentives).

    • Regulatory resilience.

  7. Conclusion

    • DeFi is still early — like social media before Facebook, it’s fragmented and experimental.

    • But it has the potential to reshape finance in the same way onchain social is reshaping communication.