Decentralised finance (DeFi) is an ever-growing ecosystem that supports creation, trade, and management of digital assets in a decentralised manner based on the disruptive blockchain technology. One of the main goals of DeFi is to eliminate the middlemen, hence reducing the costs and delays in operating financial services.

This course provides a comprehensive introduction to DeFi and the prevalent illicit activities in this digital asset ecosystem, and how to identify and analyse them.

In the first part of the course, students will learn essential components of DeFi, including Centralised Exchanges (CEX, e.g. Binance, Coinbase) - centralised entities that allow exchanges of digital assets (e.g. Bitcoin, Ethereum, NFTs), Automated Market Makers and Decentralised Exchanges (DEX, e.g. Uniswap, Pancakeswap) - mechanisms and platforms implementing them that manage exchanges of digital assets automatically based on a set of smart contracts, Mixers (e.g. TornadoCash) - DeFi services that enable private transfers of digital assets, and Bridges (e.g. Wormhole, Stargate) - DeFi services that allow transferring assets across different chains. Students will also learn the process of real-world asset tokenisation, including how physical or traditional financial assets can be represented and traded as digital tokens.

In the second part, we will delve into different types of crypto scams such as phishing, Rug Pulls, Ponzi schemes, approval scams, and other fraudulent schemes that have impacted Australian investors and DeFi users worldwide. Students will also explore blockchain forensics, learning various investigative techniques to track illicit transactions, analyse scam patterns, and trace stolen assets using on-chain data and forensic tools.

Through hands-on exercises, real-world case studies and datasets, and forensic investigations, students will gain the knowledge and practical skills necessary to navigate the DeFi ecosystem, identify malicious activities, and track the malicious actors across chains. This course is especially valuable for those in cybersecurity, computer science/software engineering, IT, data science, finance, law enforcement, and regulatory roles, where understanding DeFi security is becoming an essential competency.