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

4.8
stars
1,569 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

NS

May 28, 2022

I personally would prefer a little bit more challenging tests and more of practical work.However, I really enjoyed the course and are planning to continue.

VF

Jan 5, 2022

Everybody who wants to quickly get around all these new and exciting decentrilized technologies is advised to take the series of courses. Info provided is deep enough, easy to grasp, and concise.

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201 - 225 of 359 Reviews for Decentralized Finance (DeFi) Infrastructure

By Juliana K

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Sep 17, 2022

Perfect. Easy to understand about DeFi.

By Miguel D

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Jan 25, 2022

Great initial course, great explanation!

By Tunde Z

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Dec 12, 2021

The delivery was an absolute top notch.

By Langu

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Nov 24, 2021

A lot of practical, useful knowledge! :)

By Luke O

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Oct 24, 2023

Well structured and easy to understand.

By Muh F A

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Dec 30, 2022

Very good and solid foundation for DeFi

By Peter

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Feb 10, 2022

Well presented, well explained course.

By Heather H

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Oct 16, 2021

Well presented, clear and informative.

By Anne-Sophie C

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Apr 8, 2022

thanks prof Harvey for this course !!

By Lundrim A

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Apr 3, 2025

perfect content and amazing lectures

By Andrea B

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Aug 23, 2023

Very clear and interesting teaching.

By Subodh

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Aug 15, 2022

So much cool information! Thank you

By Adeniyi O

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Jun 15, 2022

i really learnt a lot in the course

By Dmitry V

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Jan 2, 2022

Outstanding course and easy to learn

By Alex C

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Feb 17, 2025

Very clear and succint, great start

By Aamir J

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Oct 14, 2022

Well structured and well presented

By bacool

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Nov 14, 2021

great depth in course 1, impressive

By Sandeep S

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Mar 17, 2022

insightful and easy to undersrand

By Chandrashekhar

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Jan 26, 2022

Great Introductory course for deFi

By Arpan M

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Oct 2, 2022

Great introduction to the space.

By A K

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Jan 18, 2022

Gives an excellent review of DeFi

By Fabricio F

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Aug 19, 2025

Good basic knowledge about DeFi.

By Jason C

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Apr 26, 2022

very clear and comfortably paced

By Chenyang Z

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Mar 19, 2022

very convincing and enlightening