In 2020, DeFi Summer ignited the market, which can be regarded as the first ecological outbreak in the history of cryptocurrencies, distinguishing itself from the traditional ICO funding game. DeFi shifted the game of funds to the chain and thus promoted the development of infrastructure.
Decentralized finance (DeFi) can bring greater imagination to capital and financial gameplay, but as one generation of versions replaces another, the DeFi track has shown a declining trend since 2020.
#DeFiChallenge To be realistic, what goes up must come down. This cyclical rise and fall has caused many people to be trapped in the game. In the context of zero-sum games, the winners in the decentralized finance game are those who attract market attention by leveraging the funds contributed by "bagholders".
#FutureofDeFi As the market cycle develops, most people may gradually realize that only "new concepts and new projects" can reignite market sentiment. Therefore, we need to focus more on new concepts.
1.The emergence of DeFi 2.0
DeFi 2.0 is not a new term, and there are even concepts such as GameFi 2.0 and NFT 2.0. In fact, we don't need to understand in detail what makes these 2.0 concepts outstanding. We just need to know that they are using old concepts to attract new "investors".
Therefore, if we must bet on native narrative concepts, sub-concepts such as DEX, lending, and yield farming that occupy half of the current DeFi landscape are not the best choices, or the cost of choosing them is high, and they also test investors' skills.
Betting on relatively new things is more profitable, which is the theme of this article: synthetic assets.
2.The potential applications of synthetic assets.
I believe many people in the market have heard of the concept of RWA that has been repeatedly mentioned this year. In other words, it is a bridge between traditional finance and crypto finance, which links real-world assets.
This is reasonable from both the perspective of future market incremental funds and the novelty of the concept (of course, DeFi also includes other ecosystems such as SocialFi, but this article only considers the native perspective of DeFi).
The mainstream application of RWA is currently in the bond market, which is supported by the tangible value of US bonds. However, the elements are too single, and I think synthetic assets have more imagination space.
This article does not want to mention a specific project, even if it is widely concerned by the market as a leader in synthetic assets.
3.Introduction to Synthetic Assets
As the name suggests, synthetic assets are combination financial instruments composed of multiple assets, such as stocks, bonds, fund shares, etc., which can all be used as underlying assets for synthetic assets.
The reason why I said earlier that synthetic assets have rich imagination space is because they can allow investors in the industry to diversify their asset allocation and even specialize it. Due to the relatively free nature of DeFi, it may also attract more off-chain players to "enter the market with assets".
Connecting DeFi with real-world financial assets is a necessary step to further expand the market application. Currently, the overall synthetic asset race has not formed a clear competitive pattern, so it has not really exploded and is still a blue ocean.
Therefore, from the perspective of trends and expectations, the concept of "synthetic assets" in DeFi is worth continued attention in the second half of the game.
4.Development Obstacles
Finally, I would like to mention the biggest obstacle that synthetic assets may encounter in their future development path - regulation!
As it involves real-world assets, this is an inevitable problem that will be encountered. The previously launched "stock tokens" by FTX have been widely criticized. Of course, this is not just a problem that synthetic assets face, but also a problem that the entire RWA race will face.
After all, for traditional finance, crypto always has some "unjust" color, so the RWA race and even synthetic assets need a clear macro regulatory environment to support them. Otherwise, they will still encounter very fatal blows in the development process.