Decentralized finance, or DeFi, focused on providing decentralized financial services that anyone, anywhere, can access. DeFi platforms are available for lending, staking, trading, liquidity mining, minting, insuring - you name it. Some of these DeFi platforms function as decentralized exchanges for cryptocurrency. A decentralized exchange (or DEX) is a peer-to-peer marketplace where transactions occur directly between crypto traders. Other DeFi platforms for cryptocurrency investing and trading, follow the DAO principle, meaning that it's blockchain-powered decentralized autonomous organization.