The price to pay for freedom

One of the features which has been used to encourage people to come on board the train of decentralised finance (Defi) is the freedom from control or regulation by any government entity or centralised authority. This concept of true financial freedom would have been great had it not been for the emergence of fraud in the Defi space. The absence of regulation now seems like a loop hole which must be addressed if truly the prospect of onboarding more people to defi is expected to come to fruition.

Although one of the common slogans in the crypto space is always do your research, the reality is that so many people in the general public do not know what to look out for in terms of red flags when faced with the opportunity of investing in defi projects. Even when some of these projects pass the test of known features to avoid or look out for, there is still a chance of rug pulling or absconding away with investors funds. The case of projects which passed audits by well known crypto security firms lay credence to this existential threat.

A mechanism of sorts to checkmate the activities of actors in the defi space who have malicious intent needs to be developed else the hope that crypto would one day unseat the conventional banking or financial system will be nothing more than a mirage as the absence of some level of trust in the system will scare away a vast majority of the general populace.

Similarly in the quest to have access as well as pass information in an unregulated space, we have seen the emergence of several social media platforms, some of which employ blockchain technology. These platforms have provided an alternative to the mainstream media outlets who usually have some sort of bias in their reportage and hence deliberately do not present the facts as they are so as to suit the narrative their benefactors want the public to believe.

With this freedom to access alternative sources of information dissemination has come a challenge which is becoming more sophisticated by the day. Some of these platforms are now being flooded by fake news in the form of deliberate misinformation such as manipulated or doctored images as well as videos which are intended not to present the facts as they are but to achieve a selfish or sinister motive which the mainstream media outlets are accused of.

What makes it somewhat worse is that no one is usually held liable due to the anonymity that usually goes with the accounts on these platforms especially those built on Blockchain technology.

In order to check the spread of fake news there has been a clamour for people to always verify information posted on social media platforms to ascertain their authenticity before sharing such but this campaign has failed to yield the desired result. The reason for this failure is that most people are simply too lazy to go through what they see as the stress of verifying information while some don't just care about the consequences of spreading or sharing information which turns out to be false.

Except we choose to kid ourselves, the reality is that in order to check fraudulent behaviour as well as disinformation or misinformation, there is obviously a need for some sort of check and balance mechanism or system to protect these freedoms which ought to be a blessing but whose abuse now appears to be a curse of sorts.

Some may opine that any form of censorship or regulation of these freedoms is a no go area as it would go against the essence or spirit of decentralisation or freedom of speech. If there's a way to checkmate these ills aside from the aforementioned mentioned option , I will be fully in support as we cannot sit idly by and watch as these freedoms are being exploited by a few for selfish or personal gains .

The cost of their exploitation is taking its toll as in the case of fake news lives have been made miserable and even lost in some instances. The price to be paid for these freedoms may be too heavy for us to bear someday if nothing is done to check the activities of those who have chosen to abuse them.