By DeFiZen

Responsibility is something that no one can GIVE you -You have to TAKE ”

Now, why am I starting this with the responsibility things? Well, let me explain that here first before we decide to go further in this journey.

DeFi as you know by now is the acronym of two words De*centralized Finance*. The fact, that is well understood from its name is that - it is a financial system without a centralized force behind it. For example, in the traditional financial system - that you and I were accustomed to for so long- we have seen people often trusting commercial Banks to take care of their hard-earned money as the Responsible Party during the unforeseen dooms days to save them financially when required. Though history proves again and again that all over the world commercial banks and other centralized financial organizations failed drastically, that too multiple times, to execute the honest trust embedded in them by the common citizens for ages. Anyhow, it was the practice for more than 150 years now and we were grown up having a certain kind of respect and blind trust towards the banks and the bankers. As teenagers, with little more understanding than our two years old sister yet still far less exposure to the real world, we started imagining that probably the bankers are the real guys because of whom Santa came with gifts every Christmas. A few years later, as grown-ups, we realized pretty soon that the case was almost exactly the opposite. Banks were good friends during the good times but kind of evils when you really need them. Why? Because they first take a lot of money in the name of Santa, keeps a much bigger portion for their all-year-round Christmas parties and return a smaller portion to you as if doing some goodwill in the name of Santa. Still, generations after generations, kept trusting the banks and most of the other financial institutions to keep their hard-earned money. Poor depositors - many in the known circles of yours and mine, or maybe even you and I, got doomed many times but kept repeating the same things as our previous generations once again and again. I am sure many of us are still doing it religiously without a real understanding of the whole financial snare cycle that has been in circulation for so long. One reason to follow this path and get trapped in this whirlpool was the reason that there was no such proven alternative approach to address these issues until recently.

Defi evolved as an alternative approach to handle this issue of blind trust on current financial system and the concept was created by asking an open question: “What would it be like, if the people who often do extremely hard work for earning money throughout their lives - start taking Majority of the Responsibilities of their finances Themselves, rather than keeping it in somebody else’s illusory custody of safety (read as banks) ?”

Now, I have intentionally highlighted the words Majority, Responsibilities and Themselves.

Why Majority: You - as a user of Defi, DO NOT require to create the whole technology and mechanism behind it to participate in the Decentralized Financial Ecosystem. Someone else is well-equipped with the proper tools to do that task for you. We will learn about “them” in the next session in detail. For now, we will try to understand this from the example of car driving from the previous session. It would have been a nightmare for most of us if we had to manufacture a new car all by ourselves if we wanted to procure one. We don’t do that – right? We can simply decide on the Brand of the car we want to buy, go to that particular brand’s authorized car dealer’s showroom and we are pretty much good to go with the purchase of the car of our desire. The car company manufactures the vehicle with the best possible tools available to them, to provide us with the highest possible quality as per our requirements. That’s all. It’s that simple. You go to the showroom, buy the car and Zoom.

You didn’t have to build the car yourself, did you?

Why Responsibility: Until the car was in the showroom you practically had no liabilities or responsibility towards that car. Now since you have already taken it out of the showroom and enjoying your newfound sport on the roads, you are entirely responsible for your and others’ safety on the road when you are at the driver’s sit. And you are also liable for not obeying the rules made for the vehicle owners of that particular city or state or country, wherever you drive. You can’t sue the showroom if you face an accident nor you can go and ask the manufacturer to replace the vehicle if you lost the earlier one because somebody stole your car while you parked it on the roadside with the keys inside.

It's exactly the same in the case of Defi. You are responsible for the Safety of your own belongings. Coincidently we call the most important belonging in the Defi ecosystem – “the Keys”. We will deal with this in great depth in the next session. Don’t worry much about that now.

Why Themselves: Because – like in our case of car ownership, Defi gives the Total Ownership of your money to YOURSELF. Now, you will be deemed responsible and liable for anything and everything that happens to your possessions inside the Defi Ecosystem. In other words, you have placed and equipped yourself to take total control of your own money and dismiss the position of the Commercial Banks entirely forever to make party with your possessions. Now you do not have to blindly trust some outsider for the safe custody of your hard-earned money, rather you will take care of that yourself, becoming your own bank.

Is that exciting and scary at the same time?

Maybe for a few of us it is exciting and for some others scary. There is no particular right and wrong to this. Everyone is wired differently and trust me you do not need to get rewired yourself to something that is not very appealing to you right away. Defi is not going to be mainstream everywhere right away, there is a fair amount of time still left to stick to the old methods if you wish. And that is perfectly okay, depending on your comfort. So, it’s your call now you may choose to continue reading and complete this series if anything excites you or you may feel to simply skip to something else as you may like.

However, I assure you, if you choose to stick to it for some more time, you will be well-prepared and far well informed to avoid many financial folly in the future.

Our Defi cruise is ready to leave the traditional shore tomorrow. Hope to see you onboard.

Bon Voyage!!