Back to Decentralized Finance (DeFi) Infrastructure
Learner Reviews & Feedback for Decentralized Finance (DeFi) Infrastructure by Duke University
1,544 ratings
About the Course
Decentralized Finance: The Future of Finance is a set of four courses taught by Campbell R. Harvey (Professor of Finance at the Fuqua School of Business, Duke University, and a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research) that focus on decentralized finance (DeFi). In this first course, we begin by exploring the origins of DeFi and take a broad historical view from the earliest barter economies, such as the first peer-to-peer exchanges of bartering, to present day. The course also looks at historical examples of money having value even though it is not officially backed.
We then focus on the key infrastructure components: blockchain, cryptocurrency, smart contracts, oracles, stablecoins and decentralized applications (or dApps). This includes discussion of the mechanics of the Ethereum and Bitcoin blockchains including cryptographic hashing.
Next, we focus on the specific problems that DeFi is designed to solve: inefficiency (costly, slow, and insecure today), limited access (1.7 billion are unbanked), opacity (we need to trust regulators to monitor banks and the regulators have mixed records), centralized control (financial system is oligopolistic imposing higher fees than we would have in a competitive market) and lack of interoperability (it is difficult to move funds from one financial institution to another today). The course closes by exploring many of the myths about the crypto space.
Top reviews
NS
May 28, 2022
I personally would prefer a little bit more challenging tests and more of practical work.However, I really enjoyed the course and are planning to continue.
GC
Mar 14, 2022
v​ery high level, very short course m​aybe could have more support material to go deeper into some topics but i guess we will do that on part 2 , 3 and 4
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