# DeFi

By [Untitled](https://paragraph.com/@0x34f5c50de3bba7e57ffecedffeb91513c8b37cca) · 2023-01-25

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Decentralized financial services, or decentralized finance (eng. Decentralized Finance, DeFi) is the general name for analogues of traditional financial instruments implemented in a decentralized architecture\[1\]. These services are public, open source, and most often based on smart contracts. Decentralized financial services include non-custodial protocols for lending against cryptoassets, decentralized exchanges (DEX), prediction markets, and protocols for issuing synthetic assets and derivatives. Financial instruments that exist on the same blockchain platform can be linked together in various ways due to software compatibility of smart contracts and standardization

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*Originally published on [Untitled](https://paragraph.com/@0x34f5c50de3bba7e57ffecedffeb91513c8b37cca/defi)*