Background: The difficulty of using DeFi has long been an issue, with a penetration rate of only 1.4%

According to a 2024 survey by Triple A on global cryptocurrency ownership, currently about 6.9% of the global population owns cryptocurrency, which is about 562 million people.

DeFi has long been seen as the hope for Mass Adoption, but its penetration rate has been dismal.

How can we estimate the number of DeFi users? We can calculate from the daily active addresses of the current mainstream mainnet/Layer 2, with the total daily active addresses of ETH, Base, and Solana being around 8 million, without deducting the witch addresses and multi-chain players, so 8 million is an overestimated figure.

8 million / 562 million = 1.4%

That is, the current DeFi penetration rate among all crypto players is only 1.4%, but in terms of trading volume, it has grown at lightning speed, with the current DEX accounting for 16.7% of the CEX trading volume, a historical high.

This also reveals a fact: the DeFi market is still dominated by large-scale existing users, and it has low attractiveness to new users.

So the main reasons why DeFi fails to attract new users are still around the high knowledge threshold and poor user experience. Taking the simplest Swap as an example, users need to know how to transfer tokens to the chain, reserve Gas Tokens, and understand what slippage and authorization are, a series of complex operations that are not as convenient and fast as one-click buying and selling on a centralized exchange.

So is DeFi destined to become a zero-sum game, becoming a playground for old users?

The participation of AI may be able to break through the past predicament of DeFi, and this has also given birth to a whole new narrative - DeFAI.

Reference: https://www.triple-a.io/cryptocurrency-ownership-data

What is DeFAI?

If DeFi represents the innovation of financial decentralization, then DeFAI (DeFi + AI) is the next stage of evolution to truly bring "decentralized finance to the masses". The core value of DeFAI lies in "using AI to reduce the complexity of DeFi" and further expand the application scenarios, so that more people can easily and safely use various blockchain financial services.

The core value of DeFAI has the following three points:

• Lowering the operational threshold: Users no longer need to manually switch various complex interfaces, they only need to enter natural language instructions such as "Swap 1 ETH to USDC, and then provide liquidity to a certain pool", and the AI will help you complete the multi-step operation.
• Automated strategies: Arbitrage and investment strategies that previously required professional traders to develop can now be run by AI agents, and even automatically adjust risk parameters, allowing ordinary investors to enjoy quantitative-level tools.
• Integrated data analysis: AI can synchronously monitor community sentiment, KOL comments, on-chain transaction data, price trends, etc., and automatically place orders when the conditions are met, providing operations that are closer to the actual market situation.

Categories and Representative Projects of DeFAI

• AI Abstraction Layer: Abstracting complex DeFi operations (Swap, Bridge, Staking, etc.) through natural language, allowing users to only need to enter instructions like "I want to swap 2 ETH to USDC and provide liquidity", and the AI agent will automatically handle the details like multi-protocol interaction, optimal path, and gas consumption optimization. This type of DeFAI project is the most numerous.

Representative Projects:

1. Griffain

• Operates on the Solana ecosystem, supporting natural language transactions, NFT Minting, token sniping, etc.
• Solana Foundation has retweeted Griffain tweets multiple times.
• Capable of multi-agent collaboration and has customizable automation capabilities.

1. Heyanon.ai (anonymous)

• Led by the Danielesesta team, emphasizing "one-stop" cross-chain transactions, lending, and yield strategy integration.
• The backend connects to cross-chain bridges like LayerZero and instant price oracles like Pyth, to assist users in quickly completing complex operations.

• Focuses on cross-chain functionality, integrating over 100 public chains and more than 200 DeFi protocols, making it convenient for users to manage assets across chains.
• Particularly emphasizes automated strategies and liquidity management, capable of handling multi-step transaction workflows.

• Won the champion at the Solana AI Hackathon.
• Users can not only use natural language input to complete transaction intentions, but also provide detailed information on liquidity pools, token locking, and smart money addresses.

• Automated Trading Agents: After obtaining user authorization, this type of AI agent can automatically execute complex, multi-step trading strategies, such as "regularly buy ETH and deposit it into a liquidity pool" or "cross-chain bridge and then auto-arbitrage", users only need to propose high-level requirements without manual operation of the details.

Representative Projects:

1. Almanak

• Focuses on institutional-level quantitative trading and security; uses TEE (Trusted Execution Environment) to avoid strategy theft or MEV attacks.
• Can first simulate strategies in an EVM forked environment before officially deploying to the mainnet, reducing actual operational risks.

1. Cod3x

• Provides a "no-code" strategy development environment, where users can drag and drop components to build AI trading agents.
• Integrates external APIs and machine learning prediction models to make trading strategies more intelligent.

• Market Analysis Agents: This type of AI is used to integrate and analyze massive on-chain data, KOL tweets, forum trends, etc., providing users with real-time and multi-dimensional market insights. When combined with trading agents, it can automatically execute buy and sell orders.

Representative Projects:

1. AIXBT

• Tracks over 400 KOLs and community interactions, able to monitor topic heat and community sentiment in real-time.
• Can answer user questions and provide instant analysis or token price forecasts.

1. Kwant

• Provides investment recommendations to users based on technical analysis of candlestick charts.

Conclusion

DeFi has previously been hindered by high thresholds and complex operations, forming a "niche circle" dominated by a small number of users with large capital. But with the breakthroughs of AI in conversational interfaces, strategy automation, and data integration, DeFAI has opened up a whole new path for "decentralized finance". In the future, from simple natural language transactions to advanced automated arbitrage, and even multi-agent collaborative ecosystems, they will all become more mature thanks to DeFAI.

Perhaps the next real "DeFi Summer" will come with DeFAI, allowing more users to enjoy the potential returns of decentralized finance in a low-threshold way. At the same time, professional investors can also use it for more flexible and secure trading strategies. As blockchain and AI continue to deeply integrate, the DeFAI wave is also gradually expanding, worthy of anticipation and continuous observation.