Autor Cointelegraph By Max Yakubowski

Sameep is the founder of QuickSwap, a decentralized exchange on Polygon that allows users to swap, earn, stack yields, lend, borrow and leverage, all on one decentralized, community-driven platform. “My answer here will be similar to the last one. Absolutely — in 2020 and 2021, DeFi experienced mass growth. More and more people realized the importance of having their money work for them. Institutions and retail investors started staking their crypto to earn more of it, but as more people (and bots) started using various blockchain networks, those networks became congested, and gas fees (on some of them) went through the roof. These rising costs then made the barrier of entry too high for those who only have small amounts to work with. Just like crypto itself, for DeFi to continue gaining adoption, big-name, trusted protocols need to launch on sidechains that offer low transaction costs, like Polygon. We already saw several behemoths like Aave and Compound come over in 2021, and they brought lots of liquidity and users with them. As more big players embrace interoperability and function on multiple chains, gas fees will decrease across the board, which will give more people the opportunity to adopt cryptocurrency and DeFi.”

Dominik is the co-founder and chairman of the Iota Foundation, an open-source distributed ledger and cryptocurrency designed for the Internet of Things. “The biggest difference between crypto in 2017 and crypto in 2022 is the establishment of tangible business models and use cases within our ecosystem thanks to DeFi. We no longer have to wait for external parties such as large companies to drive adoption. We can do it ourselves with applications that introduce much-needed innovation to the base level of our economy — finance. 2021 has been a tremendous year for early-stage validation and growing excitement toward DeFi’s potential. But it’s still early stages. DeFi isn’t yet comparable to fintech companies like Revolut or N26 (2 million to 5 million monthly active users) or established Web2 finance players like PayPal (361 million active users). It’s anyone’s game, since no DApp in the crypto space has achieved mass adoption. Going into 2022 and equipped with the right layer-one networks, we’re aiming for mass adoption. To achieve that, we need to eradicate the entry barriers for buying and selling crypto through regulated fiat bridges (such as banks), overhaul the user experience, reduce fees (anything above $0.1 is not acceptable), and provide the right guide rails so everyone can easily and safely participate in the decentralized economy (such as custody solutions, decentralized identity and secure wallets). DeFi is legitimizing crypto and decentralized economies. Traditional financial institutions are already starting to participate. In 2022, we will only see an uptick in usage and adoption. The beauty of permissionless innovation is that we are able to rapidly evolve as an ecosystem to find the best possible solutions. DeFi is the rapid innovation playground we needed to finally upgrade the finance sector with technologies that will empower everyone to participate in the global economy.”