Perhaps the next real "DeFi Summer" will come because of DeFAI, allowing more users to enjoy the potential benefits of decentralized finance in a low-threshold way.
Written by: WOO
Background: DeFi is difficult to use and has been an old issue, with a penetration rate of only 1.4%
According to Triple A's 2024 survey on global cryptocurrency ownership, approximately 6.9% of the world's population currently owns cryptocurrency, which is 562 million people.
DeFi has always been seen as the hope for Mass Adoption, but its popularity is dismal.
How to estimate the number of DeFi users? We can calculate it from the daily active users of the current mainstream public chains/Layer 2. The total number of daily active addresses of ETH, Base, and Solana is about 8 million, which has not yet deducted the witch addresses and multi-chain players, so 8 million is an overestimated number.
8 million / 562 million = 1.4%
In other words, the current DeFi penetration rate among all cryptocurrency players is only 1.4%, but its share of trading volume has grown at the speed of light. The current share of DEX in CEX trading volume is a record high, reaching 16.7%.
This also leads to a fact: the DeFi market is still dominated by existing users with larger amounts of capital and is not very attractive to new users.
The main reason why DeFi is difficult to attract new users is still the high knowledge threshold and poor user experience. Taking the simplest Swap as an example, users must know how to transfer tokens to the chain, reserve Gas Tokens, and know what slippage and authorization are. A series of complex operations are not as convenient and fast as one-click buying and selling in a centralized exchange.
So is DeFi destined to become a zero-sum game and an amusement park for old users?
The participation of AI may break through the dilemma of DeFi in the past, and this has also spawned another new narrative - DeFAI
Reference: https://www.triple-a.io/cryptocurrency-ownership-data
What is DeFAI?
If DeFi represents innovation in financial decentralization, then DeFAI (DeFi + AI) is the next stage of evolution to make "decentralized finance truly accessible to the masses." The core value of DeFAI lies in "using AI to reduce the complexity of DeFi" and further broaden the application scenarios, allowing more people to easily and safely use various blockchain financial services.
DeFAI's core values are as follows:
Lower the operational threshold: Users no longer need to manually switch between various complex interfaces. They only need to enter natural language instructions such as "Swap 1 ETH to USDC, and then invest in a pool to provide liquidity", and AI can help you complete multi-step operations.
Automated strategies: Arbitrage and investment strategies that used to require professional traders to develop can now be run by AI agents, and even risk parameters can be automatically adjusted, allowing ordinary investors to enjoy quantitative tools.
Integrated data analysis: AI can simultaneously monitor community voice, KOL comments, on-chain transaction data, price trends, etc., and automatically place orders when conditions are met, providing operations that are closer to actual market conditions.
DeFAI Categories & Representative Projects
AI abstraction layer: complex DeFi operations (Swap, Bridge, staking, etc.) are abstracted through natural language, allowing users to simply input intuitive instructions such as "I want to exchange 2 ETH for USDC and provide liquidity". The AI agent behind it automatically connects multiple protocols, optimal paths, optimal Gas consumption, etc. This type of DeFAI project is also the largest.
Representative projects:
1. Griffain
Running on the Solana ecosystem, it supports natural language transactions, minting NFTs, and sniping new coins.
The Solana Foundation has retweeted Griffain several times.
It can work collaboratively through multiple agents and has customized automation capabilities.
2. Heyanon.ai (Anonymous)
Developed by the Danielesesta team, it emphasizes "one-stop" cross-chain transactions, lending, and income strategy integration.
The back-end is connected to the cross-chain bridge LayerZero, the real-time price oracle Pyth, etc., which can help users quickly complete complex operations.
3. Grift
Focusing on cross-chain functions, it integrates more than 100 public chains and more than 200 DeFi protocols to facilitate users to manage assets across chains.
Special emphasis is placed on automated strategies and liquidity management, capable of handling multi-step trading processes.
4.Buzz
Won the championship in Solana AI Hackathon.
Users can not only complete transaction intentions using natural language input, but also provide detailed information about the portfolio of liquidity pools, token locks, and smart money addresses.
Automated trading agents: After obtaining user authorization, this type of AI agent can automatically execute complex, multi-step trading strategies, such as "regularly buying ETH and depositing it into the liquidity pool" and "automatically arbitrage after cross-chain bridging". Users only need to make high-level requests without having to manually operate the details.
Representative projects:
1. Almanak
Focus on institutional-level quantitative trading and security; use TEE (Trusted Execution Environment) to prevent strategies from being stolen or attacked by MEV.
You can first simulate the strategy in the EVM fork environment and then officially deploy it to the main network to reduce actual operational risks.
2. Cod3x
Provides a "no-code" strategy development environment where users can drag and drop components to create AI trading agents
Integrate external APIs and machine learning prediction models to make trading strategies smarter
Market analysis agent: This type of AI is used to integrate and analyze massive amounts of on-chain data, KOL tweets, discussion forum trends, etc., providing users with instant and multi-faceted market insights. If combined with a trading agent, it can automatically execute buys and sells.
Representative projects:
1.AIXBT
Tracking over 400 KOLs’ interactions with the community, it can monitor topic popularity and community sentiment in real time.
Can answer user questions and provide instant analysis or token trend predictions.
2. Kwant
Provide users with investment advice based on technical analysis of K-line charts.
Conclusion
DeFi once blocked mass users due to high barriers and operational complexity, forming a "niche circle" dominated by a small number of old users with large amounts of funds. However, with the breakthroughs of AI in dialogue interface, strategy automation and data integration, DeFAI has opened up a new path for "decentralized finance". In the future, from simple natural language transactions to advanced automated arbitrage, and even the ecosystem of multi-agent collaboration, DeFAI will become more mature.
Perhaps the next real "DeFi Summer" will come with DeFAI, allowing more users to enjoy the potential benefits of decentralized finance in a low-threshold way. At the same time, professional investors can also use this to conduct more flexible and secure trading strategies. As blockchain and AI continue to deeply integrate, the wave of DeFAI is gradually expanding, which is worth looking forward to and continuing to observe.
