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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Decentralized Finance (DeFi) Infrastructure by Duke University

4.8
stars
1,504 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

XS

Feb 18, 2023

Good for beginners to understand some basic ideas and terminologies in cryptocurrency area, but there are some computer science mistakes in the videos, though they're minor.

UM

Dec 13, 2021

The course largely follows the instructor's book albeit with an easier to follow introduction. As such, this first course is an overview and it gets us ready for the information to follow.

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201 - 225 of 336 Reviews for Decentralized Finance (DeFi) Infrastructure

By Alex C

•

Feb 17, 2025

Very clear and succint, great start

By Aamir J

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Oct 14, 2022

Well structured and well presented

By bacool

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Nov 14, 2021

great depth in course 1, impressive

By Sandeep S

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Mar 18, 2022

insightful and easy to undersrand

By Chandrashekhar

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Jan 27, 2022

Great Introductory course for deFi

By Arpan M

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Oct 2, 2022

Great introduction to the space.

By A K

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Jan 18, 2022

Gives an excellent review of DeFi

By Fabricio F

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Aug 19, 2025

Good basic knowledge about DeFi.

By Jason C

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Apr 26, 2022

very clear and comfortably paced

By Chenyang Z

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Mar 19, 2022

very convincing and enlightening

By Ali J

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May 31, 2023

Great and full of information!

By Sumit G

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Sep 12, 2022

Great learning,good Experiance

By sujit c

•

Dec 22, 2021

Understandable Course material

By Victor H O S

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Sep 11, 2024

Excelent teacher. Thank you!

By Jad B

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Dec 29, 2021

Simply excellent. Thank you.

By Raul A F

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Jul 18, 2023

Interesting and easy going!

By Yelena L

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Feb 1, 2023

Great course and instructor

By Serkan K

•

Aug 26, 2022

Great introduction to DeFi.

By Byron B

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Aug 22, 2022

Excellent a great teacher..

By Prasannakarthik S

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Jan 6, 2022

A good foundation for DeFi.

By Ryan D

•

Dec 31, 2021

Excellent overview of DeFi!

By Ray H A L

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Jul 4, 2023

Interesting learning time.

By Felipe C

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Mar 20, 2022

Best course of DeFi ever.

By Nicolas L F

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May 13, 2022

A very complete course !

By JASON S

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Dec 21, 2021

succinct and informative