The internet has made it possible for individuals to connect, communicate and transact without the need forintermediaries. Similarly, Blockchain technology has the potential to revolutionize how we live our lives by removing unnecessary middlemen from transactions and making information more accessible for all to see. A Blockchain is essentially a digital ledger of transactions, agreements, contracts, and records. This ledger can be distributed across many different computers, with no centralized record of who owns what. This technology offers a new way to trade and transact online and has the potential to disrupt many industries and create a lot of opportunities for entrepreneurs. Blockchains also help improve the business operations by providing a reliable, secure and decentralized way of building trust between parties. The blockchain creates an environment where there is no need for any middlemen to establish trust between people and facilitate transactions. Blockchain technology also introduces the idea of smart contracts, which are computer protocols intended to digitally facilitate, verify, or enforce the negotiation or performance of a contract. These are agreements which are written in computer code as opposed to legal prose, which are then automatically executed by a computing system without any human intervention.
Blockchain emerged as the backbone of Bitcoin, but it has now evolved beyond digital currencies and is changing the way firms and entrepreneurs do business (Hughes, Park, Kietzmann, Archer-Brown, 2019). In particular, Blockchain technology is changing the finance industry (Harvey, Ramachandran, Santoro, 2020). Banks and other financial institutions are adopting this disruptive technology to improve their services. This new technology has the potential to change the world of finance as we know it, making it more transparent and efficient. Blockchain can be used to store and access records of transactions, which eliminates the need for a third-party intermediary. This allows for decentralization and increased transparency. For example, Blockchains allow for creating peer-to-peer lending platforms, which enable borrowers and lenders to interact directly without the need for third parties like banks. In the world of insurance, blockchains may offer greater transparency and security. Through smart contracts, blockchains have the potential to change the way that insurance professionals work by allowing them to transact in a faster and more secure manner which will result in an increase of trust from customers.
These are just a few examples of the financial innovations that make up what is now referred to as Decentralized finance (DEFI). DEFI is a system for exchanging value without centralized intermediaries. It relies heavily on peer-to-peer lending and borrowing, decentralized exchanges and trustless systems (Harvey, Ramachandran, Santoro, 2020; Dirk, Douglas and Ross, 2020; Schär, 2021). DEFI is seen as a disruptive technology that could replace traditional banking systems in the future due to its advantages of being inclusive, non-discriminatory, resilient to risk management failures, cost-effective for lenders and borrowers to access the system and more efficient in terms of financial intermediation through automated trustless systems (Larios-Hernández, 2017; Ahluwalia, Mahto and Guerrero, 2020; Harvey, Ramachandran, Santoro, 2020; Dirk, Douglas and Ross, 2020; Schär, 2021).
Blockchain and decentralized finance are not just about the future, but they are now providing a revolutionary addition to the world of finance. With these emerging technologies, financial markets will become more efficient and secure. Beyond finance, these technologies are transforming many different industries (Frizzo-Barker et al., 2020) such as healthcare (Hölbl, Kompara, Kamišalić and Nemec, 2018), insurance (Kar and Navin, 2021), supply chains (Queiroz, Telles and Bonilla, 2020) or the music industry (Chalmers, Matthews and Hyslop, 2019). These technologies create new ecosystems for business growth, as well as new opportunities for collaboration between organizations. They are also enabling entrepreneurs to explore new business model opportunities in various industries (Morkunas, Paschen and Boon, 2019). Blockchain technology can reduce transaction costs, generate distributed trust, and empower decentralized platforms, potentially becoming a new foundation for decentralized business models (Chen and Bellavitis, 2020). Through tokenization, Blockchain technology has also sparked a new wave of innovation, which started to revolutionize entrepreneurship and innovation (Chen, 2018). Importantly, the opportunities provided by DEFI in terms of lower costs, almost-immediate transactions and global reach play a crucial role for entrepreneurs in developing their businesses. This is because DEFI has the potential to drastically change the financing and investment processes for entrepreneurship and innovation.
This edited book will provide a comprehensive overview of the rapidly expanding field of Decentralized Finance and show how entrepreneurs can leverage it in their entrepreneurial ventures and business activities. We solicit your scholarly articles to be incorporated in this edited book as a chapter. We expect (but not limit to) scholarly articles to be incorporated in this edited book to highlight the following themes:
- Disintermediation and DEFI
- DEFI and entrepreneurial fundraising efficiency
- DEFI and investing in entrepreneurial ventures
- DEFI and business model disruption
- Blockchains, tokens and community building in entrepreneurship
- DEFI and NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens)
- DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations) and entrepreneurship
- DEFI and the inclusion of unbanked populations
- The risks associated with DEFI (Rug Pulls, flash loans attacks, etc.)
- Decentralized finance and traditional finance: complementary or exclusive?
Submission procedure
Prospective authors are invited to send:
- a working chapter title
- a 500 words abstract
Chapters must be original and comply with Springer's submissions guidelines. In particular:
- All chapters will be checked for plagiarism
- All chapters will undergo a double-blind peer-review process
- The chapters should not be under consideration or published elsewhere (including journals, other books
- If any third-party material is used, then appropriate permissions need to be sourced by the authors themselves
Time frame
Deadline for proposals submission: January 15, 2023
The final version is needed by April, 30, 2023
Contact
For inquiries about this call for chapters and manuscript submissions, please email to the editor: sbasly@ parisnanterre.fr