Imagine being able to borrow millions of dollars, with zero collateral or credit checks. It sounds crazy, but for one caveat: you have to pay back the entire loan in the same transaction that you borrow it. Dubbed “Flash Loans”, this represents an important new financial primitive in the Decentralized Finance (DeFi) world. This can be useful to allow anyone to capture arbitrage opportunities or to refinance loans without need for additional capital, but it has also led to exploits such as those used against bZx.

Flash loans have raised the stakes for many DeFi protocols, yet also act as a stress-test to make them more resilient. Will flash loans be the Achilles Heel of DeFi or will they propel it to the most resilient, robust financial system that the world has ever seen?

This panel was streamed on March 6 2020 at 9am PST.

Panelists
Max Wolff (  / maxcwolff  )
Compound

Tina Zhen (  / tzhen  )
honeylemon.market

Camila Russo (  / camirusso  )
The Defiant

Gavin McDermott (  / gmcdermott  )
IDEO CoLab Ventures

Dan Elitzer (  / delitzer  )
IDEO CoLab Ventures