DeFi (Decentralized Finance) has become one of the hottest industries in the world. Thousands of developers churn away at building the next generation of financial services. They tirelessly labor over the details of complex networks that can power these decentralized platforms.

In between periods of writing code, they can be found passionately fighting online to spread their vision for the future and share the benefits of these new technologies over traditional versions.

There is just one problem. Nobody cares.

Nobody cares that these networks are decentralized or secured through a PoS (Proof-of-Stake) system. Nobody cares that these networks are secure, trustworthy, and transparent. Nobody cares that these networks can provide immutability or transfer of wealth.

Although most developers in the DeFi space would want to fist fight me over what I just wrote, that doesn’t change the fact that nobody cares.

Let’s be clear, all of the things I listed above that nobody cares about do matter. I care about them deeply and most people would agree they are essential to the future of finance. Yes, they matter, but still nobody cares.

Unless developers begin to understand what matters to customers, we won’t be able to reach mass adoption. The average person has only a few things they can care about in their lives. We can all only take so many battles, and for most people, DeFi is not one of them.

Nobody wants to come home from a long day at work and vote on a few lines of code being added to a DAOs network. Nobody wants to worry they will misclick and destroy their money if they accidentally type in the wrong receiving crypto wallet address. Nobody wants to be personally responsible for their entire net worth.

Evolution of the Internet

At the dawn of the internet, developers cared about decentralization. Most services that were launched were actually decentralized. Music sharing, chat rooms, and computing was all decentralized.

Over time, applications that were built on the internet became increasingly centralized. Eventually, we saw the rise of “Cloud Computing” which ushered in a new era of development. Developers could deploy faster, scale quicker, and keep higher uptime rates due to the centralization of infrastructure.

But then something interesting happened..

With each new generation of internet users, they were becoming less and less technical. Today, only a tiny portion of the general population understands how the internet works.

All people care about is whether their Netflix loads quickly, their text message is received reliably, and their photos get backed up securely. They have no concept of how these things happen, they are simply magic at this point.

DeFi will go the same way as the internet. The networks that are built will need centralized services on top of them that are fast, reliable, and secure. Average users will not interact directly with the protocols or networks, just like how internet users don’t write their own TCP/IP requests.

Imagine how useless the internet would be if every user was expected to craft their own protocol requests every time they wanted to do something on the internet. It would suck.

Obviously, if it would suck to do it on the internet, we should absolutely not be expecting it for DeFi. Especially since the cost for making even the tiniest mistake can ruin someone’s life.

Ok… So what do we do?

We begin by changing the way we think about DeFi. My proposal is to change the abbreviation DeFi to mean “Developer Finance” rather than “Decentralized Finance”. The benefits of this change are obvious:

This highlights that DeFi is primarily for the benefit of developers who are building new open, decentralized, and secure financial systems. By having a branded market for developers trying to build financial tools, it will bring new developers into the ecosystem.
This removes the emphasis on decentralization (which we have demonstrated is not important to customers) and instead highlights the importance of these networks for developers.
DeFi is about more than just decentralization. There is no reason to only focus on that one aspect. DeFi should be secure, reliable, scalable, fast, and decentralized. Instead of picking just one of the features of DeFi, it should encapsulate everything about the space.
Rebranding to “Developer Finance” also clarifies the purpose of these networks. The purpose is to build high impact, useful services for customers. The networks themselves are not the product for customers. They are simply a resource for developers.

Once we’ve made this mental shift, we can finally begin building products that customers want. Rather than making another hack that preys on the tendencies of gambling addicts, or slapping together another pump and dump, let’s start building products people actually want.

These services can use DeFi as their base layer, but they do not need to be 100% decentralized. They can have centralized teams, centralized decision making, and centralized infrastructure to make it happen. The DeFi networks can be used to communicate with other protocols or services behind the scenes. Not everything needs to be perfectly decentralized.

Once we have begun targeting the true needs of customers, we will begin seeing a larger audience join the market for the long term. Instead of dipping in and out based on the market conditions, people will stay because they see the value.

What do Customers Want?

I’ve talked a lot about what customers don’t want, but this discussion wouldn’t be complete without calling out what customers do want.

At their core, there are 5 things that customers want from their financial products. By providing these attributes, you will be able to conquer your market and open up new industries.

Functionality

Without functionality, your entire service is unnecessary. The product or service you offer must solve a problem that customers care about. In this product, there must be functionality that is compelling and valuable.

Reliability

The product or service must be reliable. When you click a button to do a thing, it must do the right thing 100% of the time. When you send a transaction, it must go through 100% of the time. There must be no down-time or hiccups. You must be able to see accurate and reliable data without complication.

Accountability

This will irritate some DeFi advocates, but customers need accountability. Customers need someone they can point to when things go wrong. They need the ability to call someone on the phone to get customer support and hold a person accountable. Without accountability, no institutions, governments, or individuals will use the product.

Trust

The products we develop must be secure and trustworthy. Customers must feel that they can trust the integrity of the system. They must believe that their information won’t get leaked to third parties, they must trust that the development team conducted security audits, and they must feel that their funds will not vanish suddenly because the product is not secure.

Speed

Although speed matters, it matters less than all the others. Products in this space must be developed so customers can take actions quickly and see the results of their actions immediately. Waiting for prolonged periods of time to see the results of an action is unacceptable to customers.

By following this framework, we can begin building DeFi products that customers use at scale. Without this critical understanding of customers, we will continue failing to meet the expectations of the general public.

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Defining the future of DeFi: Building a Financial System People Care About