I wrote a piece on the topic earlier this year in my blog [1] since I was also interested in learning more on the topic of Ethereum and DeFi, and not interested at all in the speculative take that attracts most people.

In my post I write about an open source project I implemented using smart contracts that acts as an options (derivatives) exchange, and all the components required for making it work (ex: stablecoins, price oracles, collateral management, liquidity pools, etc).

[1] https://thomasvilhena.com/2021/02/building-a-decentralized-o...