DeFi Australia white-paper v0.1
A friend who works for the Reserve Bank of Australia said to me recently, “Finance is the worst part of the economy”.
Decentralised Finance (DeFi) is a field of financial services and products, which use blockchain as a source of trust when transacting, rather than centralised regulatory bodies (governments, banks, exchanges, insurance companies etc). Promises of an open future, permission-less collaboration and constant iteration have fuelled a movement of developers, traders and investors hoping to improve on the broken, centralised system.
Prepare for some serious changes
As billions of dollars of liquidity pour into this DeFi ecosystem, and new projects pop up faster than any one brain can possibly register, there is a need to connect the best heads in the space: investors, government workers, developers, traders, accountants, legacy finance workers and DeFi dreamers. There is a need for the DeFi movement to reckon with the realities of the centralised system we live in. We need to start thinking how this is going to work before it affects the lives of everyday people.
Meeting in the flesh still counts, even in a distributed decentralised multiverse
Australia’s covid situation is remarkable. We can still meet in person, and we should leverage this. Australia is an island with a tiny population, our financial system can and does still run on coffee chats. DeFi Australia will be hosting some events, starting in Sydney, and expanding to other cities as we go.
100% decentralisation is not the mission
We should be clear from the start: we are not advocating for 100% decentralisation. Centralisation should probably not be eradicated, but there needs to be a significant shift towards decentralisation. None of us know where that equilibrium will land.
Mental models and concerns from the front lines
We will be interviewing founders, investors, accountants, developers, legacy finance guns, artists, government agents, and everyday people to bring thoughts into one place. More on that here.
Find us
Our favourite places to find quality, and scarce information on DeFi are Clubhouse, Medium, Twitter, Discord, podcasts and Youtube. These are the formats we will be focussing on. TikTok might appear in the grass.
DeFi Australia official: twitter meetup telegram defiaustralia.xyz
Here is a list of some of our favourite sources for good DeFi content:
Newsletters:
Defi Weekly — Insights from Sydney-based crypto gun, Kerman Kohli.
The Defiant — Financial/trading newsletter
https://www.rekt.news/ — Insider newsletter for DeFi. Fun to read.
Podcasts:
https://epicenter.tv/ — Some of the best interviews with founders in blockchain.
https://nuggetsnews.com.au/podcasts/ — Aussie giving wise advice in an uncertain age.
Dashboards:
https://defipulse.com — Quick check of all DeFi projects out there.
Youtube:
Blockchain Brad — Melbournian giving high quality, long format interviews.
