4 DeFi companies that could dominate the sector in the next 5 years

It’s no secret DeFi companies are doing some big things in crypto. The explosion of peer-to-peer (P2P) lending and borrowing and building ways to reinvent financial services with blockchain tech has drawn whales and institutions to the sector. But it’s not just the DEXs, stablecoins, and liquidity protocols that make up DeFi. There are DeFi companies that are helping to rebuild the financial infrastructure that hopes to take over legacy finance. Here are 4 DeFi companies that could dominate in the coming years as the industry grows.

Fantom

Website: fantom.foundation

Fantom is a smart contract blockchain base layer that hopes to challenge Ethereum by being faster and more scalable. One of the problems in DeFi and the rest of crypto is that transactions on Ethereum are too slow and expensive. Fantom is trying to fix that and solve the blockchain trilemma of security, stability, and decentralization. It uses a unique consensus mechanism called “Lachesis” which ensures speed and security. There’s a lot of buzz about Fantom in the crypto community. Definitely keep an eye on this as one of the exploding DeFi companies that’s helping to build important financial infrastructure.

Polkadot

Website: polkadot.network

Polkadot is a blockchain network that has a unique design. The main blockchain is called a relay chain, and it settles transactions securely like most other blockchain networks. What makes it different is users can create parachains that run on top of the relay chain. Parachains can be customized and fed into the main network, benefitting from its security. This also allows cross-chain interoperability between parachains that is impossible with other kinds of blockchains. Parachain slots are auctioned to projects that want to build on the Polkadot network, and Acala won the very first auction, bidding $1.3 billion in DOT.

Chainlink

Website: chain.link

Blockchain networks are not the only DeFi companies building the financial infrastructure needed to take down legacy finance. Smart contracts and P2P transactions don’t exist in a vacuum, and Chainlink helps with some of the necessary requirements. It’s an oracle, which is a service that provides outside data to smart contracts. Without this, any kind of real-world data like prices, event outcomes, even weather, cannot be integrated into smart contracts. Chainlink is the top oracle in crypto by a lot, and it will likely only get stronger with time.

The Graph

Website: thegraph.com

Another piece of financial infrastructure that is not as flashy and sexy as, say memecoins, but way more important is The Graph. This is an indexing system for information that allows developers to query and search for data about blockchains. When building dApps and protocols, sometimes developers want specific information, but it’s scattered all over the ecosystem in code that is not easy to search. The Graph will help speed up and build on innovative new tech instead of developers spending time to research and gathering everything from scratch every time they need it.

What other DeFi companies are you watching?

There are hundreds of interesting and important DeFi companies building financial infrastructure in the cryptosphere. These are just five, but as DeFi is often described as a “cambrian explosion” of innovative projects, obviously there are and will be more. With the intense excitement P2P financial services create for everyone who has ever tried to use legacy finance tools, DeFi is not stopping any time soon.