This article in Wired offers a useful summary of how some motivated individuals are attempting to use the transparency of the system to control bad actors.
It is short and worth reading in conjunction with this paper titled “Statement on DeFi Risks, Regulations, and Opportunities Commissioner Caroline A. Crenshaw that sets out a US regulator’s perspective on the question of how DeFi should be regulated. This extract from the paper covers the main thrust of her argument in favours of formal regulation
While DeFi has produced impressive alternative methods of composing, recording, and processing transactions, it has not rewritten all of economics or human nature. Certain truths apply with as much force in DeFi as they do in traditional finance:
– Unless required, there will be projects that do not invest in compliance or adequate internal controls;
– when the potential financial rewards are great enough, some individuals will victimize others, and the likelihood of this occurring tends to increase as the likelihood of getting caught and severity of potential sanctions decrease; and
– absent mandatory disclosure requirements,[10] information asymmetries will likely advantage rich investors and insiders at the expense of the smallest investors and those with the least access to information.
Accordingly, DeFi participants’ current “buyer beware” approach is not an adequate foundation on which to build reimagined financial markets. Without a common set of conduct expectations, and a functional system to enforce those principles, markets tend toward corruption, marked by fraud, self-dealing, cartel-like activity, and information asymmetries. Over time that reduces investor confidence and investor participation.
Conversely, well-regulated markets tend to flourish
“Statement of DeFi Risks, Regulations and Opportunities” by Commissioner Caroline A Crenshaw, The International Journal of Blockchain Law, Vol. 1, Nov. 2021.
Tony – From the Outside
From the outside 