While the meteoric rise of the value of bitcoins has captured public attention, the rise and fall of initial coin offerings (ICOs) and simple agreements for future tokens (SAFTs) in 2017/18, the subsequent advent of security token offerings (STOs) in 2019, and the explosive growth in Ethereum-based decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols since 2020 have largely gone unnoticed, even among finance professionals. This is surprising given the importance of the lessons these developments can offer for the future of finance.