Hot Take: DeFi Doesn’t Need to Be Pure — It Needs to Work

[cryptoenthusiast]

Alright, DeFi fam — time for some tough love.

For all the talk about decentralization, we’ve kinda forgotten who DeFi was supposed to serve in the first place: traders. Instead, what we’ve ended up with is an ecosystem so obsessed with ideology that we forgot to ship something that actually works in real-time markets.

Enter the idea of Minimum Viable Decentralization (MVD) — a refreshingly pragmatic blueprint that says:

“Hey, we can still be censorship-resistant without being completely unusable.”

Let’s break it down.
️ Where TradFi Gets It Right (and DeFi Doesn’t)

In the 1800s, futures were invented to hedge corn.
By the 1990s, high-frequency trading (HFT) turned finance into a latency game, where milliseconds could make or break billions.

TradFi scaled because it put traders first — building systems that were fast, reliable, and engineered for real execution. Meanwhile, DeFi’s priority list has looked more like this:

Maximum decentralization

Censorship resistance

Actually working? Uh... we’ll get back to you

Result? Block times too slow for real-time execution ( Ethereum), MEV ruining trust, and serious traders fleeing to CEXs.
The Pain Is Real

Let’s be honest:

Ethereum’s 12-15s block times = death for HFT

MEV = front-running, sandwich attacks, bad vibes

Most L2s = better, but still not “TradFi-grade”

Projects like dYdX had to leave Ethereum entirely just to make performance tolerable.

Even top DeFi protocols today struggle to retain power users. And that’s not because people don’t believe in decentralization—it’s because traders need infrastructure that works.
️ The Case for MVD (Minimum Viable Decentralization)

Here’s the deal:
DeFi doesn’t need to go full cypherpunk 24/7. It just needs enough decentralization to stay trustless, and enough performance to be usable.

That’s the core of MVD — build protocols that:

Preserve censorship resistance

Maintain permissionless access

Deliver the speed, latency, and throughput traders demand

We’re talking sub-100ms block times, one-second finality, MEV protection, and uptime that matches Nasdaq.

Ideals don’t scale. Infrastructure does.

Where This Is Headed

DeFi is maturing.
Perps are booming. Hyperliquid, Aevo, and others are paving the way.
We’re looking at a projected $351 TRILLION processed in decentralized derivatives by 2031.

But even the fastest-growing protocols are still shackled by L1 latency, rollup delays, and clunky finality. If DeFi wants to rival TradFi, MVD isn’t optional — it’s essential.
🧵 TL;DR:

🧑‍⚖️ DeFi put decentralization above all else. That’s noble… but flawed.

⚡ Traders want speed, fairness, and reliability. Ideology won’t cut it.

🧬 Minimum Viable Decentralization (MVD) offers a path forward: trustless AND fast.

🚀 The future of DeFi belongs to the builders who can balance both.

If you’re a dev building the next-gen protocol, take this to heart: You don’t need maximum purity. You need just enough to earn trust—then go all-in on performance.

Thoughts? Hot takes? Who's already nailing MVD in your eyes?
Let’s debate below

[rafihasan]

Couldn’t agree more. MVD feels like the only sane path forward. Decentralization without usability is just an academic exercise. If you’re building for real market participants, sub-100ms latency and MEV protection aren’t “nice-to-haves” — they’re table stakes. Let’s build systems that actually work.

[Nahiar806]

This hit hard. DeFi’s been so obsessed with purity that we forgot the users who matter most: traders. No one’s asking to throw away decentralization, but let’s be real — if it doesn’t perform, it won’t survive. MVD isn’t compromise; it’s evolution.

[Maxwell]

Honestly, MVD might be the most important narrative shift in years. We need decentralization, but not at the cost of function. Hyperliquid and Aevo are showing what’s possible when you optimize both. Curious — what other protocols are walking this line well?