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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Decentralized Finance (DeFi) Infrastructure by Duke University

4.8
stars
1,355 ratings

About the Course

Decentralized Finance: The Future of Finance is a set of four courses taught by Campbell R. Harvey (Professor of Finance at the Fuqua School of Business, Duke University, and a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research) that focus on decentralized finance (DeFi). In this first course, we begin by exploring the origins of DeFi and take a broad historical view from the earliest barter economies, such as the first peer-to-peer exchanges of bartering, to present day. The course also looks at historical examples of money having value even though it is not officially backed. We then focus on the key infrastructure components: blockchain, cryptocurrency, smart contracts, oracles, stablecoins and decentralized applications (or dApps). This includes discussion of the mechanics of the Ethereum and Bitcoin blockchains including cryptographic hashing. Next, we focus on the specific problems that DeFi is designed to solve: inefficiency (costly, slow, and insecure today), limited access (1.7 billion are unbanked), opacity (we need to trust regulators to monitor banks and the regulators have mixed records), centralized control (financial system is oligopolistic imposing higher fees than we would have in a competitive market) and lack of interoperability (it is difficult to move funds from one financial institution to another today). The course closes by exploring many of the myths about the crypto space....

Top reviews

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Great course! It does help that I am a finance student with a little bit of running knowledge of economics, and traditional finance. Also helps me see the centralized system from another angle!

GC

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very high level, very short course

maybe could have more support material to go deeper into some topics but i guess we will do that on part 2 , 3 and 4

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276 - 300 of 305 Reviews for Decentralized Finance (DeFi) Infrastructure

By David W

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Jul 19, 2022

Well constructed and relatively easy to follow

By Sijoy T

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Oct 12, 2022

A decent intro course to DeFi for a beginner

By Kenneth H

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Nov 23, 2022

Needs updating as ETH has since moved to POS

By Marc J L

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Dec 14, 2021

Love it and the lecturer is really good too.

By Soumya C

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Apr 17, 2022

Good overview and well researched content.

By Pema W

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Dec 26, 2021

Very much simple and easy to understand

By Sameer M

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Feb 9, 2022

very insightful and very informative.

By Nirupam

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Jan 23, 2022

Good

By Omoluru A

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Sep 5, 2022

Th

By Maneesh

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Aug 31, 2024

It does provide a good overview, but needs to be updated. For example, when the course was created Ethereum followed PoW and though course does say it will move to PoS, now in 2024 it has moved over. Then there was the question of price volatility in the quiz of module 4, it is very subjective and depends upon the time horizon, and definitely in the recent past the trend has been downwards.

By LIJIA W

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Apr 30, 2022

I didn't realize this is 4 course class! Therefore for a while i thought the professor didn't go into any details of a lot concept. i honestly didn't feel like I learnd anything i didn't already know. He focused a lot on the very obvious kinda of theory and touched superficially on the concepts of a lot technology. However i found it much better when I watch in 2x speed.

By Abhinav S

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Apr 9, 2022

The concepts are mostly read from the slides and haven't been explained well. You tube has better explained content available free of cost

By Pawan Y

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Oct 13, 2022

I got to know more about crypto its origin and its working. However, some of the contents were repetitive

By W. R

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Mar 22, 2023

unacceptable level of transcription errors. A pity, because the lecturer knows his stuff.

By Sudarsan M

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Apr 1, 2022

THe course could have had more examples from say insurance to explain the concept better

By Francois T

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Jul 20, 2022

Good course. - 2 star for the uwarranted bashing of BTC

By Olga F

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May 23, 2022

too many definitions at once without going into details

By Rahil L

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Mar 25, 2022

Very good to gain bascis of how the block chain works.

By LIU G

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Aug 17, 2023

Just read the document, no need to watch the videos.

By Ray C

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Feb 17, 2024

it's a little dated at this point, needs an update

By David S

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Oct 1, 2022

Great introduction looking forward to the detail

By Irfan S B

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Jan 23, 2023

Very basic course. Audio volume is very low.

By Daniel A M

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Apr 28, 2022

Good but basic introduction to DEFI

By Fauzia M

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Dec 29, 2023

The slides are not clearly visible

By Joe P

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Mar 7, 2022

its k