Decentralization was the beginning. Call it onchain finance

The following is a guest post and opinion piece by Andre Cronje, Founder and CEO of Flying Tulip.Decentralization was the starting point for DeFi. But it is no longer the complete operating model for most protocols, and our language should evolve with the industry.This is not an argument against decentralization. It is an argument for being precise about where it exists, where operational responsibility remains, and what trust assumptions follow.I say that as someone who spent years building toward the opposite ideal. Yearn Finance launched with no team allocation, no foundation and no pre-mine. Everything went to protocol users. The aspiration was similar to Bitcoin’s: minimize dependence on the founder and let the community carry the system forward. The original Yearn protocol ran entirely onchain. There was no offchain server supporting its core operation. The only thing I paid for was the domain name.That model would be difficult to sustain today. Users now expect an identifiable team to maintain the product, support operations, manage risk and continue creating value. Tokens are also increasingly evaluated first as economic exposure and only then as utility. The early user bas...