DeFiChain (DFI)

Overview & History

DeFiChain is a blockchain platform dedicated to bringing full DeFi capabilities to the Bitcoin ecosystem. The network operates on a hybrid Proof of Stake / Proof of Work consensus mechanism, and further leverages Bitcoin’s security by anchoring to the Bitcoin blockchain (via Merkle root) every few blocks. Being non-Turing complete, DeFi transactions on DeFiChain flow quickly and smoothly at low gas rates, and have reduced risk of smart contract errors.

DeFiChain currently supports tokenized BTC, ETH, USDT, DOGE, LTC, and BCH on the DeFiChain DEX.

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History

The DeFiChain Foundation was incorporated in November 2019 as a company limited by guarantee — resembling a foundation structure. The foundation holds the DeFiChain Trademarks, Domains and makes sure the DFI foundation funds are used as instructed by the masternodes. The Foundation is tasked with, but not limited to, boosting the ecosystem, recruiting new ecosystem partners and directing the development of the tools for ecosystem partners.

The team believes that the cryptocurrency industry is based on a simple premise: People should be in control of their finances. However, current systems are still far from providing financial services that are truly under the control of the people who use them. The mission of DeFiChain is to give people (and in the future, machines and devices) seamless access to decentralized financial services, by bringing full DeFi capabilities to the Bitcoin ecosystem.

In 2019, the team identified the core challenges to bringing DeFi mainstream

• Most general purpose platforms like Ethereum require a large amount of coding to provide financial services, increasing the risk of hackability or bugs in the code.
• There are large issues with scaling on many of these platforms — increased usage of a particular dApp affects the gas prices for all transactions on the platform.
• Governance models of most of today’s blockchains are immature and showing signs of politicization, centralization and uncertainty. 
• DeFi is concentrated to a few platforms — hence the space is missing out on a big part of the crypto market. The solution to the challenges as the team suggests were to:
• Build a blockchain specially for DeFi use cases
• Build on top of Bitcoin and anchoring to the Bitcoin blockchain chain for maximum security
• Support all major cryptoassets
• Ultilize a hybrid proof of stake and work consensus mechanism
• Incorporate on-chain governance system

With atomic swap interoperability on Bitcoin and other major crypto projects, DeFiChain aims to enable crypto users to seamlessly transact over a wide array of financial instruments in a fully unrestricted, decentralized, fast and secure manner with low transaction fees.

The initial function set of DeFiChain includes decentralized lending, wrapping of tokens, pricing oracles, exchanges, futures trading (equities and commodities), transferable debts and receivables, non-collateralized debt, asset tokenization distribution of dividends.