FinTech and DeFi: Directions for Digital Adaptation of Banks

The article is devoted to the study of decentralised finance (DeFi) as a new stage of digitalisation of the financial sector, characterized by the rejection of centralised intermediation in favor of protocol-controlled mechanisms. Unlike previous FinTech trends, such as P2P lending, crowdfunding and neobanks, DeFi involves the elimination of organisational structures as bearers of trust and their replacement with self-executing smart contracts. The purpose of the study is to consider DeFi not as another technological solution, but as an institutional form that changes ideas about the structure of financial intermediation, principles of trust and the possibilities of compatibility with the banking system. The methodological base of the article is based on institutional analysis based on the study of the characteristics of subjectivity, distribution of responsibility, sources of sustainability and regulatory mechanisms in FinTech models and DeFi protocols. Based on a comparative analysis of the stages of digital transformation, the differences between DeFi protocols are revealed in the parameters of the center of responsibility, system compatibility, identification principles, risk resistance and potential consistency with supervisory mechanisms. The article shows that DeFi cannot be viewed as a linear continuation of FinTech. The exclusion of traditional participants from the financial service chain poses the task of rethinking the legal, organisational and economic categories on which the functioning of the modern banking system is based. The scientific novelty of the study lies in identifying institutional differences between FinTech and DeFi not only in terms of technological features, but also in the structure of subjectivity, risk distribution, formalisability of obligations and the possibility of interaction with banks. It is concluded that the spread of DeFi does not require the adaptation of existing supervisory instruments, but the development of new institutional regulatory strategies and forms of interaction with centralised financial institutions.