**DeFi = Finance without Banks** Think Uniswap (swap tokens), Compound (borrow/lend), stablecoins. All happening on-chain, no intermediaries. Risks? Smart contract bugs, liquidation, market crashes.
**DePIN = AWS without Amazon** Think Helium (5G hotspots you run from home), Filecoin (rent out your storage), Akash (cloud computing). Real hardware, real resources, real money earned.
**Key Difference:** - DeFi moves *money* around - DePIN moves *stuff* around (bandwidth, storage, compute power)
**The Play:** DeFi needs DePIN to actually function. Filecoin stores data for DeFi protocols. Together? That's decentralized infrastructure on steroids.
Both fix the same problem: remove the middle guy. DeFi kills the bank. DePIN kills the cloud provider.
Future? They're merging. AI + blockchain will probably need both running together.
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Ever confused DeFi and DePIN? Here's the TL;DR:
**DeFi = Finance without Banks**
Think Uniswap (swap tokens), Compound (borrow/lend), stablecoins. All happening on-chain, no intermediaries. Risks? Smart contract bugs, liquidation, market crashes.
**DePIN = AWS without Amazon**
Think Helium (5G hotspots you run from home), Filecoin (rent out your storage), Akash (cloud computing). Real hardware, real resources, real money earned.
**Key Difference:**
- DeFi moves *money* around
- DePIN moves *stuff* around (bandwidth, storage, compute power)
**The Play:**
DeFi needs DePIN to actually function. Filecoin stores data for DeFi protocols. Together? That's decentralized infrastructure on steroids.
Both fix the same problem: remove the middle guy. DeFi kills the bank. DePIN kills the cloud provider.
Future? They're merging. AI + blockchain will probably need both running together.