While the Bitcoin Protocol laid the foundation for a new era of peer-to-peer financial services when it was launched in 2009, Ethereum, the first smart contracts-powered blockchain and the platform on which the Maker Protocol is built, offers the ability to execute the kind of complex functionality required by modern finance applications. 

Today, nearly six years after its launch, the Ethereum blockchain hosts an over $42 billion ecosystem of decentralized applications that provide wide-ranging services previously available only to wealthy or institutional investors.

Let’s explore the history and amazing trajectory of decentralized finance (DeFi), and why many believe it’s important to the future of finance. 

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