🗃️1) De-Fi Infrastructure

The DeFi market is continuously expanding, especially in the past year, with a significant increase in total deposits. It is utilised in areas such as lending, decentralised exchanges, asset management, and derivatives. According to Defi Pulse, as of March 2021, global DeFi deposits (Total Value Locked) reached $41.8 billion, up nearly 75 times from $5.6 billion in March 2020. Unique Active Wallets have also increased from 20,000 in August 2020 to 40,000 as of March 2021.

DeFi services are currently dominated by lending (47%), followed by decentralised exchange (DEX) (36%), and are gradually diversifying into asset management (Assets) and derivatives (Derivatives). As for lending, there are two representative platforms, MakerDAO and Compound, which provide lending services using crypto as collateral, and these platforms are responsible for issuing stablecoins such as DAI as collateral for loans. Decentralised exchanges are systems that use smart contracts to hold property and enforce trading rules for all participating individuals to execute transactions, with services offered by SushiSwap and Uniswap, among others.

While the current share of DeFi services is dominated by overseas-based platforms, the emergence of domestic DeFi companies is a significant development. These companies have been providing services since 2019, mostly in the lending sector. Delio, which started its service in July 2019, is the largest DeFi company in Korea, holding KRW 1.9 trillion ($1.69 billion) in deposits as of March. It has partnered with crypto exchange Bithumb to provide lending and deposit services for crypto assets. Notably, in recent years, big tech companies such as Kakao and Naver have also been expanding into DeFi through subsidiaries that work in the blockchain business, further highlighting the local potential in this sector.