[SOUND] In the previous lesson, we talked about tokens and tokenization. Now, it's time to refresh our memory on the evolution of money, which is necessary before we start talking about decentralized finance. The evolution of money had the following important milestones. First of all, barter appeared even before money, after that gold and silver, next type was metal coins, then paper money or bank notes appeared, then we move to plastic cards and electronic money, and finally cryptocurrencies and tokens are emerging. Digital assets are one of the most exciting things in the blockchain and web through space. Many blockchain developers focus on decentralized finance, also known as DeFI. DeFI is about creating a brand new monetary system built on public blockchains. DeFI is about transparent programmable digital assets. Due to the decentralized nature of the blockchain, operations with tokens are fully transparent and programmable so they cannot be mediated or blocked by any single third party. This makes tokenized systems global and available to anyone in the world no matter what their country of origin, political or economical situation. Decentralized finance aims to create a financial system that is open to everyone and minimizes the need to trust and rely on middleman. Technologies, like the Internet, cryptography and blockchain, give us the tools to collectively built and control a financial system without the need for central authorities. There is a saying in the blockchain space, don't trust, verify. With the blockchain networks, you as an individual, can verify any and every transaction that occurs on the blockchain. DeFI allows everyone to take charge on their financial well-being. Another important feature of DeFI is composability. DeFI is like a smart money Lego. With Lego, you start out with a bunch of small bricks. It's up to you how to put the bricks together and build something you. The same is true about smart contracts. With each new project, product or service launched on a blockchain, you have one more money Lego in your collection. And by piecing together existing components of DeFI, you can combine, modify or create powerful new finance tools out of these building blocks. At the time of filming this, the entire decentralized finance market is worth $700 million and has increased almost three times in the last 12 months. And more and more DeFI applications are being built every day. During this course, we will not talk about any specific DeFI products but we highly recommend you to take a look at the following projects. The first one is a Wave Flow, which is a platform where people can both exchange tokens and easily create an automated exchange or in face. Each exchange is a smart contract that is replenished with both tokens by the order. The exchange rate is determined by algorithmic pricing. Another product is Lombardini, which is a decentralized landing platform. It provides the ability to instantly borrow coins on long terms set in a smart contract. So in this lesson we've learned about decentralized finance a bit, we looked at what it is and also talked a bit about two specific DeFI solutions. You can find more details about that in the description of the video. $700 million locked in DeFI may look not very impressive compared to the traditional finance industry, but it is growing pretty fast. And it is a very good time to start building your DeFI product maybe even as a final project of this course. [SOUND]