I think DeFi was an interesting idea with some potential. It seems like nobody was able to come up with a solution that found widespread use, but with the right application it might have worked. But for now, it looks like that window of opportunity is gone. Maybe with the next crypto generation...
The problem with DeFi is that can't be used for financing. Financing requires seizable assets whereas blockchain assets are intrinsically unseizable. It can still be used for things like swaps, but that market isn't very large.
You could create seizable assets if you find a way to create a legal framework that allows you to hold and transfer physical or intellectual property via NFTs. If you could own the copyright to an ape picture, instead of an NFT with the URL to an ape picture, it could be actually worth something.
Trading physical property as NFTs would create a lot of possible applications. I always thought that trading-property-as-NFTs and the insurance market would be the most interesting applications for DeFi.
These are credit default swaps. I don't know if they are implementable as smart contracts (I don't think so, but I could be wrong). I was thinking about overcolateralised DeFi loans which can be seen as a kind of swap where two parties exchange the returns of two different assets.
