{"id":14848,"date":"2022-01-03T09:24:00","date_gmt":"2022-01-03T08:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uni.lu\/snt-en\/?post_type=news&#038;p=14848"},"modified":"2025-02-25T16:38:11","modified_gmt":"2025-02-25T15:38:11","slug":"decentralised-finance-defi-is-not-so-decentralised-after-all","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/www.uni.lu\/snt-en\/news\/decentralised-finance-defi-is-not-so-decentralised-after-all\/","title":{"rendered":"Decentralised Finance (DeFi) Is Not So Decentralised After All"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<section class=\"wp-block-unilux-blocks-free-section section\"><div class=\"container xl:max-w-screen-xl\">\n<p>In our everyday life, most of us rely on our banks to make payments, transfer money between accounts and take care of our financial interests. The world of traditional finance involves centralised intermediaries like banks, fintech companies and stock exchanges, and it is monitored by governing bodies, such as regulators. By contrast, the world of decentralised finance (DeFi) is based on crypto currencies rather than traditional currencies, like the dollar or the euro. DeFi is governed by online communities instead of corporate executives, and the platforms these DeFi projects run on \u2013 such as Ethereum, are difficult to regulate.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Digital Financial Services and Cross-Organisational Digital Transformations (FINATRAX) research group at SnT, led by <a href=\"https:\/\/wwwfr.uni.lu\/snt\/people\/gilbert_fridgen\" target=\"_self\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener\">Prof. Gilbert <\/a>, conducted a study this year on the governance of DeFi projects. The research paper, entitled \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/wwwfr.uni.lu\/snt\/people\/gilbert_fridgen\" target=\"_self\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener\">Fridgen<\/a>\u201d will be presented at the 55th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS) in January 2022. The research was conducted by a team of Prof. Fridgen&#8217;s current and former doctoral candidates at SnT:&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/hdl.handle.net\/10125\/80074\" target=\"_self\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener\">DeFi, Not So Decentralised: The Measured Distribution of Voting Rights<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/wwwfr.uni.lu\/snt\/people\/tom_josua_barbereau\" target=\"_self\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener\">Tom <\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/wwwfr.uni.lu\/snt\/people\/tom_josua_barbereau\" target=\"_self\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener\">Barbereau<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/wwwfr.uni.lu\/snt\/people\/alexander_rieger\" target=\"_self\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener\">Alexander Rieger<\/a>&nbsp;and Johannes Sedlmeir.&nbsp;A more advanced version of the paper is already available as a pre-print \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/wwwfr.uni.lu\/snt\/people\/alexander_rieger\" target=\"_self\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener\">Reilly Smethurst<\/a>\u201d.&nbsp;The study shines a light on DeFi\u2019s shadowy and unfair governance, as well as unregistered voting rights \u2013 the opposite of registered shareholders\u2019 voting rights from the world of traditional finance. The paper focuses on voting rights issued by five DeFi projects from the new <a href=\"https:\/\/wwwfr.uni.lu\/snt\/people\/orestis_papageorgiou\" target=\"_self\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener\">Orestis Papageorgiou<\/a>: <a href=\"https:\/\/papers.ssrn.com\/sol3\/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4001891\" target=\"_self\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener\">Decentralised Finance\u2019s Unregulated Governance: Minority Rule in the Digital Wild West<\/a>, Bloomberg Galaxy DeFi Index, <a href=\"https:\/\/uniswap.org\/\" target=\"_self\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener\">Uniswap<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/makerdao.com\/en\/\" target=\"_self\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener\">Maker<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/sushi.com\/\" target=\"_self\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener\">SushiSwap<\/a> (UMA).<a href=\"https:\/\/yearn.finance\" target=\"_self\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener\">Yearn Finance<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/umaproject.org\/\" target=\"_self\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener\">Universal Market Access<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DeFi services range from peer-to-peer loans and payments to the exchange of derivative, an instrument whose value is derived from the value of one or more underlying assets. From 2020 to 2021, DeFi experienced spectacular growth; the Galaxy DeFi Index, for instance, represents $65 billion. DeFi projects allow for the distribution of voting rights in the form of tradable tokens \u2013 also known as voting right tokens or governance tokens. Tokens define how many individuals can govern a project, and what voting rights are allocated to them. Instead of being majority-owned and controlled by banks, projects are governed by holders of these tokens. But how does it work in practice?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DeFi\u2019s enthusiasts criticise \u201cfat cats\u201d from banks and financial institutions, while their own field breeds a new species of majority shareholders \u2013 more commonly called \u201cwhales\u201d. Whales can be, for example, a DeFi project\u2019s developers, advisors and early investors, who sometimes accumulate governance tokens before anyone else is able to purchase them via crypto exchanges. The research uncovers this major gap between reality and DeFi\u2019s promotional rhetoric. Although DeFi\u2019s governance is promoted as open, fair and democratic, its voting rights are in fact highly concentrated.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To measure the concentration of DeFi\u2019s voting power, the study employs conventional measures of inequality like the Gini coefficient, which is used to measure inequalities in the distribution of voting right tokens among individuals of the DeFi community. The authors argue in their research that re-centralised is a better fit for DeFi\u2019s governance system than decentralised. They rehash a 19th-century saying from Alexis de Tocqueville, French historian and philosopher: \u201cWhen a nation abolishes aristocracy, centralisation follows as a matter of course.\u201d History seems to repeat itself.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The full article can be read <a href=\"http:\/\/hdl.handle.net\/10125\/80074\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener\">here<\/a>.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In our everyday life, most of us rely on our banks to make payments, transfer money between accounts and take care of our financial interests. The world of traditional finance involves centralised intermediaries like banks, fintech companies and stock exchanges, and it is monitored by governing bodies, such as regulators. By contrast, the world of decentralised finance (DeFi) is based on crypto currencies rather than traditional currencies, like the dollar or the euro. DeFi is governed by online communities instead of corporate executives, and the platforms these DeFi projects run on \u2013 such as Ethereum, are difficult to regulate.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":335,"featured_media":14849,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"featured_image_focal_point":[],"show_featured_caption":false,"ulux_newsletter_groups":"","uluxPostTitle":"","uluxPrePostTitle":"","_trash_the_other_posts":false,"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false},"news-category":[4],"news-topic":[],"organisation":[184],"authorship":[335],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v22.3 (Yoast SEO v22.3) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Decentralised Finance (DeFi) Is Not So Decentralised After All - SnT I Uni.lu<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In our everyday life, most of us rely on our banks to make payments, transfer money between accounts and take care of our financial interests. The world of traditional finance involves centralised intermediaries like banks, fintech companies and stock exchanges, and it is monitored by governing bodies, such as regulators. By contrast, the world of decentralised finance (DeFi) is based on crypto currencies rather than traditional currencies, like the dollar or the euro. DeFi is governed by online communities instead of corporate executives, and the platforms these DeFi projects run on \u2013 such as Ethereum, are difficult to regulate.\u00a0\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.uni.lu\/snt-en\/news\/decentralised-finance-defi-is-not-so-decentralised-after-all\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Decentralised Finance (DeFi) Is Not So Decentralised After All\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In our everyday life, most of us rely on our banks to make payments, transfer money between accounts and take care of our financial interests. 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