DeFi giants join forces to promote decentralization and tout the value of decentralized finance

With the recent collapse of centralized finance (CeFi) firms in 2020, about 20 DeFi projects, including Aave, MakerDAO, and Yearn, have come together to begin sharing each other’s tweets on Monday as part of a 24-hour campaign to promote the permissionless nature of decentralized finance (DeFi).

The promotional initiative is part of the effort to strengthen the DeFi narrative and showcase the value of DeFi following the collapse of major centralized finance (CeFi) firms in 2022, including Three Arrows Capital, Celsius, and FTX. The initiative is also a hint at the first major collaboration in the DeFi industry.

“In the wake of recent crashes in centralized finance, the case for DeFi has never been stronger,” the teams said in a news release. “The smart contracts and open-source code that governs decentralized protocols have proven to outperform imperfect humans who are incentivized to convince their users to trust them based on arbitrary reasoning.”

The teams also added: “This campaign is a celebration of the fact that DeFi thrives when protocols and Web3 organizations can plug into each other and compound innovation and user experiences. This group initiative is an experiment that could only work in Web3.”

The other participating DeFi ecosystem includes projects such as Element, CoW Swap, Balancer, Aura Finance, Euler, Gearbox, Dopex, Pods, Opyn, SushiSwap, DegenScore, Stake DAO, Zerion, Ajna, Oasis.app and Podss Finance. Much of the campaign was organized by Yearn and Element.

Organizers of the campaign hope the promotion will reach 2 million Twitter users. Aave currently boasts the largest Twitter following among the participating teams with more than 522,000 followers.

Commenting on the initiative, Draper, CMO, Yearn, said: “There is something special happening in Decentralized Finance. This campaign celebrates what makes DeFi different from the systems it seeks to replace – executed in a way that could only work in this space. We hope it will serve as yet another reminder that, in the wake of CeFi blow-ups, DeFi stands apart not only through its technological composability but also its shared values.”

Mamun Rashid, the CMO of MakerDAO’s Growth Core Unit, described the permissionless and collaborative nature of DeFi as fundamental to the sector’s growth.

“To realize the full potential of DeFi, we need collaboration, where a diversity of ideas and expertise come together to create new and innovative financial solutions for a decentralized world. Together, we can push the boundaries of traditional finance and build a more inclusive and accessible financial system through DeFi. By joining forces, we can drive the industry forward and bring the benefits of decentralized finance to people worldwide. This campaign is a shining example of DeFi innovators coming together to showcase inclusiveness, the spirit of collaboration, and the shared belief that only by standing together can we deliver meaningful change.” – Mamun Rashid, CMO, GrowthCU at Maker.

“This campaign is a shining example of DeFi innovators coming together to showcase inclusiveness, the spirit of collaboration, and the shared belief that only by standing together can we deliver meaningful change,” Rashid said. “Together, we can push the boundaries of traditional finance and build a more inclusive and accessible financial system through DeFi.”

“Today marks a shift in the tide for the collective representing Web3’s financial sector. We dream of stacking our tools like money Legos, but until the tech catches up, we must never cease to work on finding common ground and aligning our values so that we put ourselves in a position to serve accordingly. Social change is one of the key elements that will drive DeFi into the mainstream, and today we come together to recognize that no project will be able to complete this mission alone.”- Fernando Martinelli, CEO of Balancer Labs

The campaign comes at a period when the DeFi sector has seen some rebound. with TVL up 25% to $48B, since the beginning of this year.