| Issue |
SHS Web Conf.
Volume 218, 2025
2025 2nd International Conference on Development of Digital Economy (ICDDE 2025)
|
|
|---|---|---|
| Article Number | 04018 | |
| Number of page(s) | 11 | |
| Section | Digital Economy Policy: From Governance to Inclusion | |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/shsconf/202521804018 | |
| Published online | 03 July 2025 | |
Current Status, Key Issues and Development Trends of DeFi
School of economics, Tianjin University of Commerce, Tianjin 300134, China
1 Corresponding author: wjr1354928798@outlook.com
Decentralized Finance (DeFi) has become a transformative force in the financial sector, using blockchain technology to create open, permissionless financial services. Its total value locked (TVL) grew from $675 million in 2020 to $180 billion in 2021, before stabilizing at $40-50 billion in 2023. This research examines DeFi infrastructure, applications, and governance mechanisms; analyzes challenges limiting adoption; and identifies trends shaping its evolution. Through analysis of literature, reports, and market data, this study examines DeFi’s technical foundations, application scenarios, governance structures, and development challenges. Results indicate DeFi has established robust foundations supporting diverse ecosystems but faces barriers in technical (scalability, security), regulatory (compliance, legal uncertainty), and market dimensions. Future evolution may be characterized by four trends: integration with traditional finance, cross-chain interoperability, balancing privacy with regulatory compliance, and institutionalization with maturing financial engineering. These findings contribute to literature on blockchain-based financial systems and provide guidance for practitioners, regulators, and researchers.
© The Authors, published by EDP Sciences, 2025
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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