Decentralized finance is not owned, operated, or controlled by any single corporate entity, government, individual, or centralized board of directors. Instead, DeFi protocols are open-source software applications governed collectively by distributed communities of token holders through decentralized autonomous organizations or algorithmic voting mechanisms. Because the infrastructure runs on public, permissionless blockchains, code execution is transparent and autonomous, ensuring that no central authority possesses ultimate ownership or unilateral control over the overarching ecosystem.