Curious about DeFi in 2025? Let's see the top 5 DeFi business models and see what’s next for decentralized finance
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Have you ever seen a new tech gadget drop and instantly felt like you had to get your hands on it, even though you didn’t fully understand what it did? Or noticed a startup quietly disrupting an entire industry, and thought, “How did I not see that coming?” This is the path Decentralized Finance (DeFi) is taking. It's quick, evolving, and ready to make a huge impact in 2025.
DeFi is actively working toward redefining the modern financial framework, with 2025 promising even greater advancements. However, in the upcoming year, which DeFi business models would take the spotlight? Which ones will lead the way, and which ones will just fade into the background?
In this blog, we’ll analyze the 5 DeFi business models that are expected to take the lead in 2025. If you are a beginner in DeFi or an investor seeking your next investment opportunity, knowing these models might be the key to gaining a competitive advantage. Let’s explore the upcoming innovations in the financial arena.
Let’s explore the upcoming innovations in the financial arena.
>> Decentralized Exchange (DEX)
>> Decentralized Insurance
>> Real-World Asset Tokenization
>> Decentralized Payments
>> DeFi Hub
Within the DeFi ecosystem, Decentralized Exchanges (DEXs) have become one of the most dominant and fast-growing business model sectors. With these platforms, users get the liberty to exchange their cryptocurrencies peer-to-peer, without requiring an intermediary such as a central exchange. Let’s examine why their growth in 2025 is set to sustain.
Why Is This Business Model The Best?
Alternative To CEX
DEXs addressed the pain points that plagued centralized exchanges in the past, like high gas fees and slow transaction speed, while giving users full control over their assets.
Market Growth
DEXs captured 25% of the total crypto trading market share as of June 2025, a significant rise from just 9.3% 18 months prior.
High User Base
By mid-2025, over 9.7 million unique wallets had interacted with DEXs, and top platforms like UniSwap and ParaSwap showed strong user activity.
Regulatory Pressure on CEXs
The failure of FTX and similar scandals in the past contributed to the mistrust investors have in CEXs and their migration towards DEXs.
Technological Innovation
For mainstream users, blockchain technology with Layer 2 scaling has increased transaction speeds and decreased fees, thus increasing DEX adoption.
Why Does It Work In 2025?
People are beginning to realize the importance of self-custody, which only DEXs can provide. In 2025, we’re likely to see an uptick in institutional adoption of DEXs. As regulations are rolled out globally, many will seek decentralized alternatives for trading.
Institutions have started using regulatory-compliant whitelisted versions of DEXs to enter DeFi. DEXs are increasingly used, acting as liquidity hubs for new assets and possibly even traditional securities.
Especially the growth of DEX aggregators like 1inch and Matcha, which allow users to get the best prices across multiple exchanges with a single transaction, further increases the adoption of DEXs.
A decentralized insurance model that addresses fundamental inefficiencies in traditional insurance may be the next area of opportunity for the DeFi ecosystems. Though it constitutes only a small portion of the greater DeFi market, its growth forecasts suggest a bright outlook for 2025.
Why Is This Business Model The Best?
Transparent, Lower-Cost Insurance Model
Studies indicate that decentralized insurance systems could reduce administrative costs by up to 20%, benefiting both insurers and insured.
P2P Insurance Model
Decentralized insurance also uses peer-to-peer (P2P) models, where users can insure each other directly. By eliminating intermediaries, the model promotes community-focused insurance.
Technological Growth
DeFi insurance incorporates modern insurance solutions using blockchain technology, smart contracts, and decentralized protocols, thus enabling insurance to be more accessible, less costly, and more transparent.
High Growth Rate
This sector seems to be growing the most, even though it is still in its earliest stages. The market is expected to increase from $2.36 billion in 2024 to $3.51 billion in 2025 and $17.07 billion by 2029.
Why Does It Work In 2025?
Users are more frustrated with traditional insurance’s lack of transparency and its often complex terms, so blockchain-based solutions gain wider acceptance. Decentralized insurance will be widely used as users look for ways to secure their assets.
With cryptocurrencies on the rise, more individuals and corporations are exposed to financial threats resulting from hacking, smart contract failures, and other digital asset vulnerabilities.
Because of these emerging threats, decentralized insurance will become increasingly important since it will be able to provide insurance to risks associated with smart contract failures and stablecoin depegging, which traditional insurers will be unable to provide.
Real-world asset tokenization (RWA) is advancing swiftly and looks to be one of the most effective DeFi business models of 2025. Tokenization enhances accessibility and transparency to an unprecedented level by enabling traditionally illiquid assets such as real estate, treasury credits, and private credits to be accessed on blockchain networks. This business model works out as it combines the reliability of traditional assets with decentralized technology.
Why This Business Model Is The Best?
Massive Market Growth
In 2025, the RWA market is booming. By mid-year, it had surpassed $25 billion, with projections suggesting it could reach $50 billion by the year's end. There is a swift move towards tokenizing assets such as U.S. Treasuries, real estate, and private credits.
Easy Access For Everyone
With tokenization, you don’t need millions to invest in real estate. Platforms like RealT let users buy small shares of properties starting at just $50.
More Liquidity
Traditionally, assets like property or loans are hard to sell quickly. Tokenization makes these assets tradable 24/7 across the globe, which is great for both individual and institutional investors.
New Asset Classes
Beyond traditional assets like real estate and treasuries, new types of assets like carbon credits, intellectual property, and ESG-related assets are also being tokenized, opening up even more opportunities.
Why It Works in 2025?
Major finance firms like BlackRock, JPMorgan, and Goldman Sachs are no longer just testing this out. They are launching real products. For example, Franklin Templeton released a tokenized money market fund in Singapore.
By issuing tokenized shares, Coinbase, Kraken, and Robinhood are helping onboard new investors. EMA, UAE, and Singapore are instituting regulations for digital assets, which boosts investor trust and security.
Experts say the RWA tokenization market could grow from billions today to $16 trillion by 2030, and maybe even $30 trillion by 2034.
Within DeFi, decentralized payments are tracking towards the fastest growth. Especially with the rise of stablecoins and DeFi dapps, they are expected to boom in 2025, providing a less risky and less expensive option than centralized payments for individuals, companies, and even governments.
Why This Business Model Is The Best?
Market Growth
By mid-2025, the decentralized payments space made up 12% of the entire DeFi market, with over $146 billion in stablecoins flowing through DeFi protocols and $12.6 billion transferred via cross-chain bridges
Global Reach with Lower Fees
Peer-to-peer and international payments through DeFi are much faster and cheaper than traditional banking systems. No middlemen, no waiting days for transfers to settle.
Booming Stablecoin Use
Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies but are linked to real-world currencies such as the US dollar. Stablecoins avoid the drastic price changes of other cryptocurrencies. With increasing business adoption and better regulations, the stablecoin industry could hit $400 billion by 2025.
Growing Adoption
More people and businesses are using decentralized payments daily, from e-commerce to cross-border corporate treasury settlements. These are no longer just crypto-native use cases.
Corporate Use Cases
Businesses are using DeFi payment systems for cross-border transactions, thus eliminating the time and cost involved in traditional wire transfers.
Why Does It Works in 2025?
As of mid-2025, mobile DeFi wallet usage is up 45%, making it uncomplicated for the public to access DeFi and decentralized payment applications from their mobile phones.
Getting started with DeFi is now easier and beginner-friendly, as users can buy crypto with fiat directly on their apps, such as MetaMask.
The collaboration of well-known companies such as Mastercard with Chainlink is bridging the traditional and new financial systems and infusing trust and scalability in decentralized payments.
Venture capital keeps flowing into DeFi payment platforms. Projects like Uniswap and EigenLayer raised hundreds of millions of dollars in funding, showing strong belief in the long-term future of decentralized payment systems.
In 2025, DeFi hubs are growing in popularity due to the fact that they simplify and improve performance, ease, and access to DeFi. Users no longer need to jump between different applications for staking, lending, or trading as everything may now be done using a single platform.
Why Is This Business Model The Best One?
All Services in One Place
A DeFi hub offers a full range of financial services on a single platform. Users no longer need to change applications to use trading, lending, borrowing, staking, or yield farming.
Cross-Chain Support
Many hubs now work across multiple blockchains, solving the problem of having your assets split up on different networks. You can move money and data easily between chains using built-in bridges.
AI Integration
With AI, these platforms can automate trading, improve risk assessments, and help users earn better returns. In fact, AI-powered DeFi protocols have already crossed $850 million in usage in 2025.
Faster, Cheaper Transactions
Hubs that function on Layer 2 technologies like zkSync and Arbitrum offer lower transaction fees and improve transaction speed, allowing more people to access and use decentralized finance.
Better User Experience
The top hubs focus on simplicity. Mobile-first apps, easy onboarding, and features like wallet abstraction make it easier for beginners to use DeFi. Some also use Decentralized Identity (DID) to let users build trust without giving up personal info.
Why Does It Works in 2025?
DeFi hubs make it easy for new users by combining multiple tools into one simple interface. This has lowered the barrier to entry and helped attract millions of new users.
With Layer 2 blockchains, DeFi hubs now process more transactions than ever, capturing 22% of weekly DeFi volume.
Better bridges and tools now allow users to move across chains smoothly. This means DeFi hubs can offer a wider range of services and consolidate more liquidity, improving results for users.
DeFi overall is booming in 2025 with $123.6 billion total value locked, 14.2 million active wallets, over $48 billion in weekly transaction volume, and $41 billion in institutional capital exposure.
The world of DeFi is expanding rapidly, and 2025 is expected to bring significant developments. From DeFi insurance to yield farming, these business models are far more significant than trends. They affect the trajectory of modern finance. These business models provide fresh approaches to earning, saving, investing, borrowing, and lending, all without the use of conventional banking institutions.
What's so intriguing about DeFi is that it continues to advance and address actual issues. As more users engage with crypto and blockchain, the need for intelligent, secure, and user-friendly DeFi mechanisms will only increase. That is why the companies backing these models are ones to watch in the future.
As a top DeFi development company, Maticz enables entrepreneurs, businesses, and innovators to create robust, secure, and scalable DeFi platforms that meet real-world needs. Be it tailor-made yield farming platforms and decentralized exchanges (DEXs) or DeFi lending/borrowing protocols, stablecoins, and DeFi insurance solutions, we lend expertise, innovation, and full-stack support to each project. Contact us today.
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