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A lot has been talked about DeFi in the recent times and it is encouraging to see how this sector is growing rapidly which indicates the demand and formation of a new and unique financial sector which will have major positive impact on the crypto market as well which we will see in coming months.
Now what i want to discuss is that before DeFi we aleady had a lot of crypto based centralized Finance projects (CeFi) some of them seem to be grown really big business wise.
So here i want to discuss and rate the top projects in both the CeFi and Defi sector that add up to form crypto finance.
You are welcome to share your thoughts, opinions, likings and dislikings regarding these and if you see more high quality projects you can mention them.

Top CeFi based projects:
Nexo
Celcius
Crypto dot com
Blockfi
Amon
Crypterium

Top DeFi based projects:
Aave
Compound
Synthetix
Uniswap
Maker
Kyber

You are open to rate them in terms of security, user and regulatory compliance, profitability and reputation etc.

Nexo - most popular in CeFi.
Kyber - popular as an exchange/swap.

As addition to CeFi, we also have Binance.
https://www.binance.com/en/lending

For me nexo seems the better option because it has simple and to the point platform, regulatory compliance, insurance and good storage facilities. The only thing they can improve is to increase returns on crypto holdings i mean 4% for btc and eth a year seem low.

I am not into anykind of decentralized finance kind of stuff till yet to be honest simply because the process looks technical and complicated to me.
Regarding centralized finance, i am not into lending and stuff because it is not worth it because the return is way too low, you can make that much easily in a month if not a week and they are paying that for a whole year so definitely not for me.

Yeah i have similar thoughts too and i think with these returns it is obviously not suitable for small investors or common people but yes these systems will benefit big investors whom we call whales or big institutions who can park their cryptos for a guaranteed return regularly.

Over the years DeFi system has not made a breakthrough in comparison with it counterpart CeFi but with the return of the DeFi, I am very optimistic to see what they have to offer to keep soaring high.

Actually DeFi based projects have the feature of being cutody or third party free, your funds are directly in your wallet and everything just goes through a smart contract so it gives a sense of scam less environment which gives confidence boost to investors.

DEFI are now very popular and also dangerous due to its high volatility rate. Compound for example mooned heavily and started to drop at an embarrassing rate causing a huge loss to traders. SNX has been doing well even DMG. I don't know what will become of DEFI.

The interest rates for DeFi are generally quite low compared to CeFi. Using Ethereum as an example.. Compound offers 0.01% and Aave 0.12%.. This is vs BlockFi's 4.5%..The trade off seems to be doing KYC vs low interest rates + the risk of an exploit. Right now DeFi is still very much in the experimental phase.

True, but it hasn't always been this way. Not too long ago you could pull 20% interest on the DAI savings rate. Not sure if DeFi rates will ever hit those lofty heights again, but it is possible, particularly during or right after the next ETH bull run. Right now is a great time to be a borrower using DeFi.

Wait what? We have CeFi? This is the first time that I have heard this term, Lol, it really looks like I need to catch up with my reading here. I'm just exploring the whole DeFi landscape and really trying to understand it. I think it's better for those who are really knowledgable on this subject to somewhat put the pros/cons of each financial instrument that taking the crypto world by storm.

Yeah i do not know who is parking there Eth for such low returns but the thing is that the rates are floating and are totally dependent on supply and demand so we can assume that once bulls are here and people are into fomo of buying we can see rates going up as well.

As far as i know most of these projects recently are more due to their tokens doing really well. Their performance and bullish move has outperformed the whole crypto market, i guess. Nexo, Cel, Cro all of them are bullish and making new highs. Secondly synthetic network with snx token has also reached new highs in last few weeks other peojects are also good and i think those projects in this category who have not moved much are probably going to move next so maybe a good chance to fill bags with them.

Uniswap is one of my favorite projects in this category and i really enjoy that platform, they have not even raised funds to develop this platform so they just came out of nowhere and introduced this unique, decentralized and innovative swap marketplace which is changing the way people used to trade crypto.

I do not think that DeFi are ready for massive adoption. They were created after the biggest drop in a crypto history, so they didn't experience a crysis and we do not know what will happen to the tokens when the crysis come back again, if the collateral would work properly.

Yes, that is a very significant point and the end results will depends only after we see how they perform during both bear phase and bull phase at the moment we can not conclude anything about these projects, all we can see right now is fomo and people rushing to buy defi based coins and tokens which is pumping the price more and more.

It is simple, people here especially in crypto market are super greedy so they will chase and try to get every shiny thing and right now defi is the shiny thing in the market which everyone is trying to get and as soon as the whales start taking profit or selling in bulk all these pumps will end up as a mountain where price will be back down, this thing we have seen already in many coins and projects before.

This is a good topic, although i have not really knowledgeable about cefi and defi if i'm going to based on it I will choose defi because its decentralized. I don't know what are the advantage of CeFi at this moment. In terms of roi, I'm also in DeFi because whe have seen a huge profit on it. I trade only and not on investing for long term as we know that sooner or later Defi hype will going to fade and just like any other projects it will going to go down and some of it will going to die.

You may be right my friend, most of the coins have deflated as soon as the hype and fomo is over but with DeFi looks like it is here to stay for much longer than most people expected. You can see that almost all the projects and coins are doing great even after this post was made and the trend seems to continue.

I don't think CeFi will be best. If it is centralized then why people choose CeFi.Crypto trader always wants his Finance to keep secure and hide. I have no idea can CeFi survive or not. I just don't want to use CeFi because I always care about my identity for using crypto.

CeFi looks like a more reliable investment, you always have someone to complain to, DeFi is more profitable at the moment, I think.

Your concern regarding identity is really good. But, it's not true that CeFi will vanish . Everyone might be thought that CeFi are fully centralized, but it's not acutally centralized becasue they are using the public blockchain and some of their operations are done by using the centralized system.. So, it's better to use Defi if anyone want to hide their identity when using crypto finance.

Remember this dude, we have seen the hacked cases that happened with CEFI and DEFI but both have different result as CEFI has already recovered all of the lost faced by investors but DEFI was not helping the users.

The difference is the accesibility. Cefi is more strict and more conservative while defi shows a true decentralized approach. We can observed that defi has more demand and more profitable as many users are always joining some action on new projects especially those are started. Many defi projects have started to sprout and comparing the cefi trend not a chance it will be more attractive. Maybe sometime in the future, but now we will always be seeing defi hype on every corner of crypto news and social media.

I have never heard of CeFi before I read the topic. From your description above, I don't see why CeFi is different from DeFi. They are the same or very nearly the same. We have ICOs and where ICOs are dead, IEOs were born to replace ICOs. So the same reason for CeFi? DeFi is going to be dead and CeFi will be born (or was it born already)?

currently the DEFI rating is still very superior, CEFI is far behind,
many people like DEFI because it is what it means in cryptocurrencies, move to DEFI because DEFI is the future

DEFI proved to cover many scam projects since anybody can launch it. It is still new but it will settle probably in 6 months from now, and it will be like in small coins masternode world, less than 5% of those DEFI projects will survive to be profitable, but they cannot sustain to offer high APY% rates since there is no institutional liquidity backup like in CEFI.

In CEFI it is all currently defined, celsius is best, nexo is worst (currently)

Name: Celsius Network
Website: celsius.network
Jurisdiction: UK/USA
Trust: 9/10
Earn APY% rates: 9/10
Loan rates: 9/10
Assets under management: 3.3 billion USD
Members: 240000
Coins supported for earning interest: 36
ATM card: NO
Have own coin: YES

Name: BlockFI
Website: blockfi.com
Jurisdiction: USA
Trust: 8/10
Earn APY% rates: 6/10
Loan rates: 7/10
Assets under management: Unknown
Members: Unknown
Coins supported for earning interest: 8
ATM card: Just announced for 2021
Have own coin: NO

Name: Apyharvest
Website: apyharvest.com
Jurisdiction: UK
Trust: 8/10
Earn APY% rates: 9/10
Loan rates: 9/10
Assets under management: 1.3 billion USDC
Members: 40000
Coins supported for earning interest: 47
ATM card: NO
Have own coin: NO

Name: Crypto com
Website: crypto.com
Jurisdiction: Malta
Trust: 7/10
Earn APY% rates: 5/10
Loan rates: 4/10
Assets under management: Unknown
Members: 5 million
Coins supported for earning interest: 34
ATM card: YES - working
Have own coin: YES

Name: Nexo
Website: nexo.io
Jurisdiction: Bulgaria
Trust: 5/10
Earn APY% rates: 8/10
Loan rates: 6/10
Assets under management: Unknown
Members: 1 million
Coins supported for earning interest: 17
ATM card: Promised August 2019, never delivered
Have own coin: YES


I would NEVER put all my assets to CEFI, since in that case i lose all my coins if CEFI platform fails. But i trust them more than DEFI since currently most of DEFI projects are gamble. Those which are defined good, like AAVE , offer very low interest rates. At time i write this, Interest APY% on USDT is 4.38% at AAVE, 10.51-13.86% at Celsius and 11.79-14.17% at Apyharvest. On ETH is much worse - AAVE APY% on ETH is 0.11%, at Celsius is 5.5-7.21% and at Apyharvest 6.25-7.82.

My current portfolio is 50% staking in CEFI, 50% i keep at cold storage ( and o still buy crypto on be-weekly basis)

From I stake ETH at Celsius, and Bitcoin, USDC and SNX at Apyharvest. I have also Crypto com atm card, and it is pretty usable, only thing i hate is that CRO coin is losing value, so i overpaid my initial card deposit when i started long ago.

Hope you find my inputs informative.

Unfortunately I will still go ahead and choose CEFI projects over DeFi projects simply because they are less disappointing and more reliable, CEFI projects are the ones that should be the most cunning in this space but they are  more transparent than many DeFi projects, that's so unfortunate for DeFi and Decentralized projects, a big shame indeed

Everyone keeps running from centralized crypto projects but today they are more reliable that those projects that are meant to protect crypto users (Decentralized), honestly I don't know what to believe in anymore, DeFi projects ruin my liking for decentralized crypto based blockchain projects this year, moreover is you lose fund to CeFi there is assurance of getting your money back but not on DeFi

Anyone can find apyharvest? If you live in UK please check below address.


166 Sloane Street, London, England, SWIX 9QF
Block 7, The Oval, Shelbourne Road, Ballsbridge, Dublin 4 D04T8F2

If any have any news, please contact tg @Tmy16

This is the first time I have seen the term CeFi, or I just have noticed this. When I think about it, it's basically what the traditional businesses are, right? They have complete control of what is going on, and that's just how they want it. I think the great idea with DeFi is that it's more transparent compared to the CeFi projects that are going on.

It's important to know what the projects have in store for everyone using it, whether DeFi or CeFi. It's best to DYOR before anything else so that check if it's worth trusting or not.

I think that this is a pretty fair list.

The only thing that you are missing imho for the DeFi applications would be Curve - they are one of the blue chips in the space.

I also would not be comfortable trusting CeFi platforms with significant amounts of money regardless of how secure they appear to be right now, it's simply not worth the risk for me personally.