Dominik is the co-founder and chairman of the Iota Foundation, an open source distributed ledger and cryptocurrency designed for the Internet of Things.

“The biggest difference between 2017’s cryptocurrency and 2022’s cryptocurrency is that due to DeFi, tangible business models and use cases have been established in our ecosystem. We no longer need to wait for large companies and other external parties to promote Adoption. We can do it ourselves by introducing much-needed innovation into the basic level of our economy-finance.

2021 is an important year of early verification and growing excitement about the potential of DeFi. But it is still in its early stages. DeFi is not yet comparable to financial technology companies such as Revolut or N26 (with 2 to 5 million monthly active users) or mature Web2 financial companies (such as PayPal) (361 million active users). This is anyone’s game, because no DApp in the crypto space has gained mass adoption.

Entering 2022 with the correct first layer network, our goal is mass adoption. In order to achieve this goal, we need to eliminate barriers to entry for buying and selling cryptocurrencies through regulated statutory bridges (such as banks), completely change the user experience, reduce fees (any fee higher than $0.1 is unacceptable), and provide The right track so that everyone can easily and safely participate in the decentralized economy (e.g. custody solutions, decentralized identities, and secure wallets).

DeFi is legitimizing cryptocurrency and a decentralized economy. Traditional financial institutions have already begun to participate. By 2022, we will only see an increase in usage and adoption.

The beauty of license-free innovation is that we can quickly develop as an ecosystem to find the best possible solution. DeFi is the playground of rapid innovation that we ultimately need to upgrade the financial industry through technology so that everyone can participate in the global economy. “