A Short Survey on Business Models of Decentralized Finance (DeFi) Protocols.

Decentralized Finance (DeFi) services are moving traditional financial operations to the Internet of Value (IOV) by exploiting smart contracts, distributed ledgers, and transactions among different protocols. The exponential increase of the Total Value Locked (TVL) in DeFi foreshadows a bright future for automated money transfers in a plethora of services. In this short survey paper, we describe the business models of various DeFi protocol types—namely, Protocols for Loanable Funds (PLFs), Decentralized Exchanges (DEXs), and Yield Aggregators. We then abstract and compare the general business models of those protocol types. Finally, we provide open research challenges that will involve different domains such as economics, finance, and computer science.