Decentralised Finance 

DeFi refers to decentralised financial applications (DApps) that have no central authority and that are censorship free.

Decentralised Applications

Decentralised applications or DApps are smart contracts or agreements that run on a distributed computing system, such as Ethereum. Advantages of utilising this financial service are immutability, transparency, and enhanced security through blockchain networks. 

Decentralised Exchange

DEXes are cryptocurrency exchanges that use smart contracts to enforce trading rules and execute trades through secure channels. The advantage of trading on a DEX is no exchange operators, no identity verification, or traditional withdrawal fees but also no regulatory compliance.

Centralised Exchange

Centralised exchanges are exchanges run by a third party that handles transactions on behalf of users, for example how the traditional stock exchange is run. These exchanges are compliant with national regulations and therefore require their users to go through Know-Your-Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money-Laundering (AML) form. This also means that all transactions are managed by a central authority.