Cryptocurrencies and the blockchain revolution are founded on the promise of providing unbanked and underbanked people around the world with the opportunity to gain access to a financial system and financial services.

This promise, however, is only partly realized — cryptocurrencies have made simple payments available to everyone, but financial services and products based on open blockchain technology have yet to emerge.

Decentralized finance makes it possible to create open services for the unbanked — but the DeFi ecosystem is focused on enhancing traditional financial services functions as a speculative investment vehicle driven by profit-seeking.

With few exceptions, the current DeFi paradigm is money centric — not human centric. Let’s change that.