Welcome to the [Kernel](https://www.kernel.community/en/) DeFi Library. First and foremost, DeFi stands for "Decentralized Finance". Explaining what that actually means, and what it means to you in your daily life, is the point of this topic section. Most importantly, having some small group of people define it is antithetical to what it might actually mean. Decentralized systems are defined not by a privileged elite, but by **common use**. We come to workable, meaningful understandings in dialogue and collaboration with one another. In some important way, the **process** by which this library topic is made is more of a definition of "what DeFi is" than any of the specific content you'll find in it. It takes many different people, with many different skills and perspectives, in order to make anything really meaningful. The ultimate proof of this is language itself: the first and most powerful decentralized system. No-one has decreed the meanings of words on this page: they are arrived at by consensus based on common use. In order to learn about what DeFi is, we encourage you not just to **read**, but **write** to this topic, so that you can come more and more to **trust** your own understanding by virtue of how you have built it up in relationship with others. 1. In the *Basics* section, we will discuss what "[[1. What is Decentralized?|Decentralized]]" means, what "[[2. What Does Finance Mean?|Finance]]" is, what "[[3. What Is Defi?|Decentralized Finance]]" is, give you a [[4. DeFi - A Brief History|brief history of DeFi]], and get you up to date with the common [[5. DeFi Terms|terminology]]. 2. In the [[Simple Machines]] section, we will discuss the five simple machines you need to understand in order to be able to navigate anything currently in DeFi with a critical and insightful eye: [[1. Pools]], [[2. AMMs]], [[3. Expiring Synthetics]], [[4. Perpetual Synthetics]] and [[5. Oracles]]. 3. In the "Insightful Resources" section, we'll keep adding any truly novel and interesting work we find in our shared wanderings, like [[The Blue Pill]] and [[Aave and Balancer|DAO to DAO collaboration]]. We'd like to thank Danny, Ola, Mitko, Viktor and the good people of KB7 for starting this initiative.