Tristan is the core contributor to Zeta Markets, an under-collateralized DeFi derivatives platform, providing liquid derivatives trading to individuals and institutions alike.
“We’ve seen a Cambrian explosion in the DeFi ecosystem in 2021, with peak TVL approaching $300 billion vs the 2020 peak of $21 billion. This sounds like the growth surely has to slow. Yet, DeFi still represents just a fraction of CeFi trading volumes.
At Zeta, we see a clear opportunity for more and more CeFi infrastructure to be built on-chain in a permissionless manner. This will unlock innovative products that have previously been impossible to implement. The following has already started to happen:
Composability trumps the siloed products of CeFi, which has created really powerful network effects and will continue to do so.
DeFi UX continues to improve, DApps on Solana, in particular, are now improving with the looks and feels of CEX products (i.e., Robinhood).
On-chain derivatives are still in their infancy but are already showing promise (dYdX surpassing Coinbase in trading volume).
On-chain primitives like oracles and order books are now a reality.
DeFi growth sustaining itself and achieving its potential blockchain speed and transaction costs will be critical. CeFi markets rely on speed and deep liquidity. This dependency is already showing some truth, with DeFi expanding outside of the Ethereum ecosystem. We suspect this is a trend that is likely to continue in 2022 and expand the DeFi pie as a whole — cross-chain bridging will be a big theme for DeFi in the years ahead as we move toward a multi-chain world.”
These quotes have been edited and condensed.
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