“How to DeFi” is a book by the team behind CoinGecko, that seeks to explain, well, DeFi. This book is light on the technicals and will not teach you how to code DeFi Dapps, instead, it seeks to demystify the sometimes truly complex world of DeFi and work as an introduction to DeFi to a person of any technical abilities. The book is structured into 4 parts with the first 2 serving as an introduction to DeFi and Ethereum in general and 3rd one (the biggest part) exploring a variety of DeFi projects. The book features not only explanations of what these projects do but also gives short guides on how to use each DeFi Dapp. The 4th part serves as an epilogue and ponders about the future of DeFi. The book explores such DeFi concepts as decentralized exchanges, stablecoins, DeFi loans, derivatives, and more. At the end of each chapter in the book, there are a lot of extra research links you can follow to learn more about DeFi on your own, this book certainly does not lack in extra material to study! Now let’s explore the pros and the cons of the book a bit more closely:
The Good
The book is interesting to read and breaks down some complex topics in easy to understand manner. It is truly suitable for beginners but pros may also be able to learn a thing or two.
The book explores a wide variety of different projects which serve different purposes, thus giving you a nice understanding of the great scope of the DeFi space.
The book provides a lot of links for extra research you can do on your own and even goes as far as recommending a bunch of DeFi newsletters, podcasts, and news sites at the end of the book. This is perhaps the greatest feature of the book and one that I am very thankful for.
The Bad
This book was released in early 2020 and at the time of writing it is now early 2021(some quick maths will tell us that the book is around 1 year old) and it’s already a bit outdated. A few of the links in the book no longer work and there was a lot of development in the DeFi space in the past year that the book will not cover (don’t expect to learn about yield farming in this book). I hope that at some point a second edition of the book comes out.
I feel that the scope of this book could have been a bit more expansive. It is a light read clocking in at only around 200 pages and I think some topics could have been discussed in more detail since I believe a lot of readers will not bother going through the list of “Recommended Readings” links at the end of every chapter.
Final Thoughts: Overall, I really enjoyed this book and though I can’t call myself an expert in DeFi yet, this book serves as a great introduction. The biggest drawback of the book is that it is already a year old and thus the DeFi market has greatly evolved since it’s release. But this flaw is heavily mitigated by all the links for extra research that the book contains. I’d give this book a strong 8 out of 10 and recommend it to any aspiring DeFi connoisseur.
