All termsDeFi and RWA IntegrationCross reference
Decentralized Finance (DeFi)
Decentralized Finance, usually shortened to DeFi, refers to financial applications and markets built using blockchain based infrastructure and smart contracts. DeFi applications can provide services such as trading, lending, borrowing and asset management without relying entirely on the same infrastructure used by traditional financial institutions.
Why it matters to you
RWAs allow traditional financial assets and claims to increasingly interact with blockchain based financial infrastructure. For example, tokenized assets may potentially be used as collateral, transferred through onchain markets or integrated into lending and asset management applications. The important distinction is that bringing an RWA into DeFi does not remove the legal, credit, custody or other offchain risks attached to the underlying asset.
Terms that sit next to this one
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