Inside the Ethereum Economy: Weird Defi and Bitcoin's $1 Billion Crop

At Invest: Ethereum Economy on Oct. 14, we will address the ramifications for investors as decentralized finance takes the crypto world by storm.

In a run-up to the event, our two-part CoinDesk Live: Inside the Ethereum Economy virtual miniseries on Oct. 8 and 12 introduces trending narratives we will break down at the main event: Why all the hype behind yield farming and food-inspired tokens? Should investors take them seriously or are they a fading trend?

Decentralized finance has made a pivot to what might be called Weird DeFi: a set of difficult-to-parse projects whose larger value to the ecosystem is suspect at best and whose community is at least 20% driven by inside jokes.

Imaginations then caught fire, leading to the oddly food-inspired birth of Weird DeFi, with its YAM, Spaghetti, Tendies and a side of Sushi.

CoinDesk senior business reporter Brady Dale hosts Priyanka Desai of Open Law and Mason Nystrom of Messari to assess the newest crazes sweeping the DeFi landscape.

For decentralized finance, as in the heady days of the initial coin offering boom of 2017, the numbers are only trending up, with some $2 billion in crypto assets locked into the market.

Crypto users are putting more value to work in DeFi applications, driven largely by the introduction of a whole new yield-generating pasture, Compound's COMP governance token.

Governance tokens are presenting fresh ways for DeFi founders to entice assets onto their platforms.

CoinDesk markets reporter Zack Voell discusses the yield farming phenomenon with Matt Luongo of Thesis, Jeff Garzik of Bloq, Loong Wang of Ren Project and Kiarash Mosayeri of BitGo.

Moderator: Brady Dale, CoinDesk senior business reporter.