Earlier this month, Shopify chief executive Tobi Lütke tweeted about his interest in DeFi, or decentralized finance, a form of blockchain-powered software that offers decentralized bank-like services. He’d been “dabbling” with a form of software used by DeFi applications, he said, and asked what role people in the community would like his company to play.

It was just the latest sign of a growing interest in DeFi from Canada’s tech and finance mainstream. Roham Gharegozlou, chief executive of Vancouver-based NBA Top Shot maker Dapper Labs, invested in a startup in late February that allows people to put up their non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, as collateral for loans. And Diagram, a “venture builder” whose anchor investor is early-stage fintech VC Portag3 Ventures, which has links to Power Financial Corporation, has job postings up for co-founders and chief executives of two DeFi-related businesses it would like to launch, and another one for a partner “with blockchain/cryptocurrency/DeFi expertise.”

DeFi has been described as either the future of finance or a permissionless casino for degenerates, depending on who you ask. But its champions believe the opportunities for big companies that get in early are huge—as are the risks if they get left behind.

Stefan Coolican, CFO of Ether Capital, a public company that invests in projects and cryptocurrency related to the Ethereum blockchain, which powers most DeFi applications, said the wave of attention from established names is validating.

“It’s incredible how much capital has flowed into it. And people are building all over the place,” Coolican said. “Slowly but surely, large financial institutions are coming to the table.”

However, as with all things crypto, the radical promise of DeFi is to disrupt large financial institutions and make them obsolete, not make money for them. Bitcoin made it possible to transfer digital assets directly from one person to another in a secure, verifiable way without intermediaries, the first step toward what believers see as a future where people have control over their own finances without the interference of central banks, governments and traditional financial players.

That future requires more than just decentralized digital assets, however. A fully decentralized financial system would require the infrastructure necessary to perform activities such as borrowing, lending, trading various cryptocurrencies for each other and creating financial products like derivatives, all without middlemen charging high fees and making rules.

DeFi is making some of those ideas a reality. Developers often make use of a feature of Ethereum known as smart contracts, which allow users to program an action to execute when certain conditions are met, and verify it happened as planned. Using the feature, they’ve created decentralized exchanges, cryptocurrency derivatives, lending and borrowing platforms and prediction markets.

Investors have already poured massive amounts of money into the sector, with DeFi smart contracts on Ethereum holding over US$53.5 billion as of publication time, according to DeFi Pulse. But while cryptocurrency believers hype up the dream of a future where decentralized finance empowers small-business owners in India to obtain loans from around the world and lift themselves out of poverty, DeFi’s most widely publicized use case to date is enabling people to make extremely lucrative, extremely risky bets that would make GameStop Redditors blush.

Andrew Kiguel, chief executive of Canadian DeFi company Tokens.com, counts himself among those who see massive potential for decentralized finance, going far beyond a few risk-addicted cryptocurrency traders making a lot of memes and a lot of money. Tokens.com makes money through staking, a process where DeFi app makers reward people who help validate and secure transactions, putting their tokens on the line as an incentive against tampering with the protocol.

Kiguel, whose company is set to go public on the Neo Exchange, said the furor over GameStop-related trading halts is an example of the demand and a use case for DeFi.

“In a democratized system, people should be able to trade when they want,” Kiguel said. “Decentralized finance’s freedom—its speed, its lower costs—are intriguing to everybody who’s looking at it relative to the current banking system.”

Dan Robichaud, managing partner at Diagram, said he thinks the Canadian financial-services sector has about 10 years before it’s disrupted by DeFi, comparing decentralized finance to Netflix and the traditional players to broadcast media. He said it was too early to go into detail about the revenue opportunities Diagram sees for the businesses it plans to launch via the job ads, but said he’s hoping to stay ahead of the curve and help Canada benefit from the opportunity: “Hopefully, we can create the Canadian companies who are going to be the Netflix of financial services, instead of being taken over by outsiders.”

While big Canadian companies worry about how to avoid getting left behind if DeFi goes mainstream, the replies to Lutke’s tweet show some people in the crypto space have a different concern. “Gut reaction: ‘I love Shopify but it feels kinda wrong [for] a centralized [company] to touch my precious decentralized DeFi,’” reads one.

Coolican said he thinks it’s helpful for established companies to speed up adoption by getting on board, however. He said he thinks corporations that try to make money from DeFi without embracing its spirit of openness and decentralization won’t be a threat, because they won’t be able to compete.

“We’re still in the early days, and to have corporations embrace digital assets and find ways to integrate them is still something that you would want,” he said “Even people that are deep in crypto think it’s probably helpful to have big companies look at integrating and supporting digital assets on their platform.”

Correction: Tokens.com is planning a public listing on the Neo Exchange. An earlier version of this story contained outdated information.