Decentralized finance has been rocket fuel for the crypto industry this year. From its humble beginnings have emerged a raft of new protocols and the personalities that built them.
DeFi analysis portal DeFi Prime has compiled a list of the top personalities and innovators in the industry this year. The outlet did not, however, divulge the criteria it used in this light-hearted list of shakers and movers in the fledgling financial sector.
Creator of the yield aggregator Yearn Finance, Andre Cronje, came out on top not just for his development of such an innovative product, but;
“He’s also an incredibly humble and skilled leader who’s laid the blueprint for how to create great DeFi services in collaboration with a committed global community of stakeholders.”
Other DeFi Contenders
Runners up included Chainlink co-founder Sergey Nazarov whose platform has made leaps and bounds in 2020 as it becomes the standard solution for oracle-driven data and price feeds.
Uniswap founder Hayden Adams made the list for piloting the world’s largest decentralized exchange and pushing Ethereum back into the limelight. Uniswap at one stage had more trading volume than Coinbase and a collateral lockup of over $3 billion during the height of the UNI farming frenzy.
Aave co-founder and CEO Stani Kulechov was nominated as the lending protocol’s team shipped high-quality release after high-quality release since January. The protocol’s native AAVE token has also been the best performing DeFi asset of 2020 with a surge of around 5,000% since the beginning of the year.
Compound Finance’s Robert Leshner and Synthetix founder Kain Warwick also appeared for sparking off this year’s yield farming frenzy.
A handful of coders and developers made their way in, namely ‘samczsun’ who has rescued a few smart contracts, and Yearn core developer ‘banteg.’
It’s a little questionable that Uniswap cloner and SushiSwap founder ‘Chef Nomi’ was included in the runner ups nominations considering he dumped on investors by selling off his stash. DeFi Prime justifies this by stating;
“The Chef makes our list here, then, precisely because he’s a flagrant beacon of a reminder that we in DeFi have to tread cautiously.”
Notably Absent
Notably absent from the list was Serum and FTX founder and SushiSwap savior, Sam Bankman-Fried, who has been a pivotal figure in the DeFi industry this year.
Even Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin was snubbed, quite surprising when considering that the entire DeFi ecosystem runs on the network he helped to create.
There are also countless others that have done wonders for the industry this year by providing insight and education. Some of these include Camila Russo, Ryan Sean Adams, and Anthony Sassano to name a few.