A Multivocal Literature Review on Decentralized Finance: Current Knowledge and Open Research Agenda

Abstract

Since the emergence of blockchain technology from the world financial crisis as a decentral-ized peer-to-peer electronic cash system, financial activity on blockchains has evolved towards being more sophisticated and constituting a whole financial system. To date, this field of De-centralized Finance (DeFi) is novel and still little researched. Our work paves the way for a comprehensive understanding of DeFi by conducting a systematic multivocal literature re-view. We present a comprehensive definition and concept of DeFi. Furthermore, we summa-rize and analyze the current state of knowledge in the literature in a DeFi research framework and then identify urgent topics to be researched in DeFi. We conclude that DeFi is not ready for mainstream adoption as an alternative financial system yet, but it most certainly provides promising features that make research on it a worthwhile endeavor.