DeFi trends in 2021 that you can use in your business

Maciej Zieliński

04 Mar 2021
DeFi trends in 2021 that you can use in your business

DeFi has seen a gigantic growth of nearly 1000% in 2020, and as decentralized finance continues to gain popularity, this number continues to grow. What DeFi trends will be crucial this year?

By the end of last year, the total value locked up in DeFi had managed to exceed $26 billion. By comparison, just a year ago there was just 831 million locked up in DeFi protocols. DeFi's incredibly rapid growth in 2020 helped set the stage for another wave of adoption in 2021. Because despite such rapid growth, DeFi still remains a very young industry with plenty of room for innovation. 

If so, what DeFi trends are worth keeping an eye on in 2021?

Proof of Stake (PoS) as a consensus mechanism

One of the most important DeFi trends in 2021 will definitely be the displacement of Proof-of-Work (PoW) by Proof of Stake. PoW is currently the most common consensus algorithm used in blockchain networks to confirm transactions. Its operation relies on the use of computing power to secure and verify data. 

So-called miners play a key role for its operation. Essentially, "mining" is the process of creating a block of transactions to be added to the blockchain. The function of miners is thus to process pending transactions in exchange for rewards in the form of cryptocurrency, such as ETH in Ethereum (respectively, 2 ETH for each block generated).

Generating a block requires the use of a lot of computing power due to the difficulty level set by the Blockchain protocol. It is proportional to the total amount of computing power used for mining and serves as a way to protect the network from attacks, as well as tune the rate at which subsequent blocks are created.

Disadvantages of PoW:

  • high energy intensity
  • networks prone to centralization of extraction
  • - limited scalability
  • - relatively low throughput

It was Ethereum, the world's most popular Blockchain protocol, that initiated the widespread transition from Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-stake algorithm. In 2021 with the next phases of updates - Ethereum 2.0, Ethereum networks will fully transition to PoS.

DeFi trends : What changes PoS brings?

  • Significantly lower energy consumption 
  • improved scalability 
  • decentralisation behaviour

Proof of stake is a consensus process by which a cryptocurrency becomes a validator for a Blockchain network. By using PoS, the security of the network is achieved through financial commitments rather than the consumption of computing power - energy. The validator runs software that confirms the transaction and adds new blocks to the chain. 

To become a full validator in Ethereum 2.0 , you will need 32 ETH. However, there will be an opportunity to join a pool of smaller validators and thus offer a smaller stake. When processing transactions, validators will take care to maintain consensus over the data and thus the security of the entire network.

DeFi trends

Liquidity of pledged tokens

However, PoS has one drawback: validators receive rewards for staking, but at the same time they freeze the pledged funds. In 2021, it is definitely worth watching what solutions to this problem the market will come up with.

Already today, DeFi platforms are starting to allow validators to create synthetic versions of their pledged tokens, which can then be used in cryptoeconomics. An example of this is Fantom's Liquid Staking, which allows pledged tokens to be converted into sFTMs, which can then be traded on Fantom Finance or used to mint stablecoins.

The ability to give liquidity to pledged funds makes this form of investment significantly more attractive. Therefore, due to the growing importance of PoS, it can be expected that the increase in the popularity of such solutions will be one of the most important trends in DeFi in 2021.

DeFi Trends: Stablecoins

Currently, stablecoin supply has surpassed $26 billion, with $20 billion added to the market through 2020 alone. Tether USDT has remained the main player for years, holding as much as 79% dominance. The stablecoin market is thus invariably dominated by the US dollar. However, as the sector matures and the macroeconomic effects of government stimulus packages become apparent, we can expect stablecoin secured in other currencies to grow rapidly in popularity as well.

Increase in importance of DEX

The latest report from Kraken Intelligence finds that nearly 96% of blocked ETH is on decentralized exchanges - DEX or lending protocols. While the amount of ETH blocked in lending protocols still outpaces that on decentralized exchanges, the growth for DEX in 2020 was far more robust. The total amount of ETH on the DEX grew by as much as 2,800%, when it only grew by 60% on lending protocols. The report indicates that at this rate, "DEX will soon control the vast majority of TVL (ETH) in the DeFi space."

DeFi trends in 2021 - summary

The year 2020 was undoubtedly an extremely favorable time for decentralized finance. That's when DeFibecame a permanent fixture in the blockchain community, attracting the attention of even those not previously associated with the technology.

But what if 2021 turns out to be an even better year for the sector? The growing public interest and numerous innovations aimed at improving scalability make it possible to consider such an eventuality highly probable. That's why many DeFi enthusiasts are looking at the current year with an almost decreasing optimism. 

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AI in Real Estate: How Does It Support the Housing Market?

Miłosz Mach

18 Mar 2025
AI in Real Estate: How Does It Support the Housing Market?

The digital transformation is reshaping numerous sectors of the economy, and real estate is no exception. By 2025, AI will no longer be a mere gadget but a powerful tool that facilitates customer interactions, streamlines decision-making processes, and optimizes sales operations. Simultaneously, blockchain technology ensures security, transparency, and scalability in transactions. With this article, we launch a series of publications exploring AI in business, focusing today on the application of artificial intelligence within the real estate industry.

AI vs. Tradition: Key Implementations of AI in Real Estate

Designing, selling, and managing properties—traditional methods are increasingly giving way to data-driven decision-making.

Breakthroughs in Customer Service

AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants are revolutionizing how companies interact with their customers. These tools handle hundreds of inquiries simultaneously, personalize offers, and guide clients through the purchasing process. Implementing AI agents can lead to higher-quality leads for developers and automate responses to most standard customer queries. However, technical challenges in deploying such systems include:

  • Integration with existing real estate databases: Chatbots must have access to up-to-date listings, prices, and availability.
  • Personalization of communication: Systems must adapt their interactions to individual customer needs.
  • Management of industry-specific knowledge: Chatbots require specialized expertise about local real estate markets.

Advanced Data Analysis

Cognitive AI systems utilize deep learning to analyze complex relationships within the real estate market, such as macroeconomic trends, local zoning plans, and user behavior on social media platforms. Deploying such solutions necessitates:

  • Collecting high-quality historical data.
  • Building infrastructure for real-time data processing.
  • Developing appropriate machine learning models.
  • Continuously monitoring and updating models based on new data.

Intelligent Design

Generative artificial intelligence is revolutionizing architectural design. These advanced algorithms can produce dozens of building design variants that account for site constraints, legal requirements, energy efficiency considerations, and aesthetic preferences.

Optimizing Building Energy Efficiency

Smart building management systems (BMS) leverage AI to optimize energy consumption while maintaining resident comfort. Reinforcement learning algorithms analyze data from temperature, humidity, and air quality sensors to adjust heating, cooling, and ventilation parameters effectively.

Integration of AI with Blockchain in Real Estate

The convergence of AI with blockchain technology opens up new possibilities for the real estate sector. Blockchain is a distributed database where information is stored in immutable "blocks." It ensures transaction security and data transparency while AI analyzes these data points to derive actionable insights. In practice, this means that ownership histories, all transactions, and property modifications are recorded in an unalterable format, with AI aiding in interpreting these records and informing decision-making processes.

AI has the potential to bring significant value to the real estate sector—estimated between $110 billion and $180 billion by experts at McKinsey & Company.

Key development directions over the coming years include:

  • Autonomous negotiation systems: AI agents equipped with game theory strategies capable of conducting complex negotiations.
  • AI in urban planning: Algorithms designed to plan city development and optimize spatial allocation.
  • Property tokenization: Leveraging blockchain technology to divide properties into digital tokens that enable fractional investment opportunities.

Conclusion

For companies today, the question is no longer "if" but "how" to implement AI to maximize benefits and enhance competitiveness. A strategic approach begins with identifying specific business challenges followed by selecting appropriate technologies.

What values could AI potentially bring to your organization?
  • Reduction of operational costs through automation
  • Enhanced customer experience and shorter transaction times
  • Increased accuracy in forecasts and valuations, minimizing business risks
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Want to implement AI in your real estate business?

Nextrope specializes in implementing AI and blockchain solutions tailored to specific business needs. Our expertise allows us to:

  • Create intelligent chatbots that serve customers 24/7
  • Implement analytical systems for property valuation
  • Build secure blockchain solutions for real estate transactions
Schedule a free consultation

Or check out other articles from the "AI in Business" series

AI-Driven Frontend Automation: Elevating Developer Productivity to New Heights

Gracjan Prusik

11 Mar 2025
AI-Driven Frontend Automation: Elevating Developer Productivity to New Heights

AI Revolution in the Frontend Developer's Workshop

In today's world, programming without AI support means giving up a powerful tool that radically increases a developer's productivity and efficiency. For the modern developer, AI in frontend automation is not just a curiosity, but a key tool that enhances productivity. From automatically generating components, to refactoring, and testing – AI tools are fundamentally changing our daily work, allowing us to focus on the creative aspects of programming instead of the tedious task of writing repetitive code. In this article, I will show how these tools are most commonly used to work faster, smarter, and with greater satisfaction.

This post kicks off a series dedicated to the use of AI in frontend automation, where we will analyze and discuss specific tools, techniques, and practical use cases of AI that help developers in their everyday tasks.

AI in Frontend Automation – How It Helps with Code Refactoring

One of the most common uses of AI is improving code quality and finding errors. These tools can analyze code and suggest optimizations. As a result, we will be able to write code much faster and significantly reduce the risk of human error.

How AI Saves Us from Frustrating Bugs

Imagine this situation: you spend hours debugging an application, not understanding why data isn't being fetched. Everything seems correct, the syntax is fine, yet something isn't working. Often, the problem lies in small details that are hard to catch when reviewing the code.

Let’s take a look at an example:

function fetchData() {
    fetch("htts://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts")
      .then((response) => response.json())
      .then((data) => console.log(data))
      .catch((error) => console.error(error));
}

At first glance, the code looks correct. However, upon running it, no data is retrieved. Why? There’s a typo in the URL – "htts" instead of "https." This is a classic example of an error that could cost a developer hours of frustrating debugging.

When we ask AI to refactor this code, not only will we receive a more readable version using newer patterns (async/await), but also – and most importantly – AI will automatically detect and fix the typo in the URL:

async function fetchPosts() {
    try {
      const response = await fetch(
        "https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts"
      );
      const data = await response.json();
      console.log(data);
    } catch (error) {
      console.error(error);
    }
}

How AI in Frontend Automation Speeds Up UI Creation

One of the most obvious applications of AI in frontend development is generating UI components. Tools like GitHub Copilot, ChatGPT, or Claude can generate component code based on a short description or an image provided to them.

With these tools, we can create complex user interfaces in just a few seconds. Generating a complete, functional UI component often takes less than a minute. Furthermore, the generated code is typically error-free, includes appropriate animations, and is fully responsive, adapting to different screen sizes. It is important to describe exactly what we expect.

Here’s a view generated by Claude after entering the request: “Based on the loaded data, display posts. The page should be responsive. The main colors are: #CCFF89, #151515, and #E4E4E4.”

Generated posts view

AI in Code Analysis and Understanding

AI can analyze existing code and help understand it, which is particularly useful in large, complex projects or code written by someone else.

Example: Generating a summary of a function's behavior

Let’s assume we have a function for processing user data, the workings of which we don’t understand at first glance. AI can analyze the code and generate a readable explanation:

function processUserData(users) {
  return users
    .filter(user => user.isActive) // Checks the `isActive` value for each user and keeps only the objects where `isActive` is true
    .map(user => ({ 
      id: user.id, // Retrieves the `id` value from each user object
      name: `${user.firstName} ${user.lastName}`, // Creates a new string by combining `firstName` and `lastName`
      email: user.email.toLowerCase(), // Converts the email address to lowercase
    }));
}

In this case, AI not only summarizes the code's functionality but also breaks down individual operations into easier-to-understand segments.

AI in Frontend Automation – Translations and Error Detection

Every frontend developer knows that programming isn’t just about creatively building interfaces—it also involves many repetitive, tedious tasks. One of these is implementing translations for multilingual applications (i18n). Adding translations for each key in JSON files and then verifying them can be time-consuming and error-prone.

However, AI can significantly speed up this process. Using ChatGPT, DeepSeek, or Claude allows for automatic generation of translations for the user interface, as well as detecting linguistic and stylistic errors.

Example:

We have a translation file in JSON format:

{
  "welcome_message": "Welcome to our application!",
  "logout_button": "Log out",
  "error_message": "Something went wrong. Please try again later."
}

AI can automatically generate its Polish version:

{
  "welcome_message": "Witaj w naszej aplikacji!",
  "logout_button": "Wyloguj się",
  "error_message": "Coś poszło nie tak. Spróbuj ponownie później."
}

Moreover, AI can detect spelling errors or inconsistencies in translations. For example, if one part of the application uses "Log out" and another says "Exit," AI can suggest unifying the terminology.

This type of automation not only saves time but also minimizes the risk of human errors. And this is just one example – AI also assists in generating documentation, writing tests, and optimizing performance, which we will discuss in upcoming articles.

Summary

Artificial intelligence is transforming the way frontend developers work daily. From generating components and refactoring code to detecting errors, automating testing, and documentation—AI significantly accelerates and streamlines the development process. Without these tools, we would lose a lot of valuable time, which we certainly want to avoid.

In the next parts of this series, we will cover topics such as:

Stay tuned to keep up with the latest insights!