Experts weigh in: Is DeFi dead or is it still the future of finance?

As the majority of DeFi related tokens continue to beat a retreat from their peaks this year, industry experts have weighed in on whether the decentralized finance bubble has burst, or if it will rise from the ashes.

There are also signs that some crypto collateral is starting to get liquidated and withdrawn from DeFi protocols as double digit yields start to dwindle.

The total value locked across all platforms has declined by 9.3% since its all-time high in late September according to DeFi Pulse.

Cosmos co-founder, Ethan Buchman, stated that DeFi is a huge step forward for democratizing access to financial products, but added that most protocols carry a considerable risk that is not always obvious.

Several DeFi platforms have been affected including bZx, Yam Finance, Bancor, dForce, Balancer, and more recently Soft Yearn.

Nicholas Pelecanos, head of trading at NEM, referenced the Yam Finance bug and its subsequent collapse as evidence that DeFi is still very much in its infancy, with the infrastructure and processes still in the experimental phase.

Yield hopping is another aspect that suggests the emerging DeFi sphere is built for speed and not for sustainability.

CEO of Blockdaemon, Konstantin Richter, likened the DeFi boom to the ICO bubble;.

Jason Wu, CEO and co-founder of Definer.org, stated that the market is more mature now than during the ICO boom, and the future of the industry will be largely impacted by the introduction of ETH 2.0, and a regulated way to bring DeFi to the mainstream.

"With the influx of capital in the DeFi space, projects are building more applications for the next generation of financial networks. The DeFi mania we see in the market right now is therefore helping in our mission to transform the world of money."