Below are some resources I would reccomend to those looking to learn more about DeFi and Crypto, categorized by topic. Even though these can be looked at in any order, I would recommend beginners to watch the first video linked under the Ethereum section to gain an understanding of networks and protocols, concepts that are ubiquitous in the DeFi World.
Ethereum
Really useful primer on ethereum and the basics of blockchain technology.
Good explanation for why WETH (Wrapped ETH) Exists.
Solidity
Whether you have some experience programming or are starting from scratch, I’d recommend starting with Crypto Zombies to learn the ins and outs of Solidity. The tutorial explains the fundamental concepts behind the Solidity language rather than just going over syntax, making it easy to understand how Solidity is well-suited to smart contracts.
How to create your own coin. Deploy using Remix.
More advanced ERC-20 implementation.
AMMs
Uniswap
You can’t go wrong with the UniSwap whitepaper. The whitepaper for Uniswap V3 is pretty confusing if you haven’t read and understood the whitepaper for UniSwap V2 first, so make sure to start there if you’re new to AMMs.
Don’t worry if you don’t quite get what’s going on here. The mechanisms behind Uniswap V3 are fairly unintuitive, and the whitepaper doesn’t do the best job on explaining the core concepts it relies upon, such as concentrated liquidity.
Curve (StableSwap)
Curve was a somewhat hard one, since the whitepaper wasn’t particularly as helpful as online resources in understanding the derivation of the StableSwap Invariant.
Prereqs: Make sure you’ve read and understood the UniSwap V2 whitepaper, especially the constant product AMM formula and the concept of a constant product invariant.
Even though it’s pretty confusing and doesn’t explain algorithm design decisions as well as it could, definitely start here to learn about Curve and the StableSwap invariant. Don’t worry if you’re confused, just read through this and then look through the next resource I’ve linked in this article.
Read this to understand the design decisions behind the StableSwap invariant. Explains the math much more intuitively than the Curve whitepaper. I would reccomend re-reading the Curve StableSwap Whitepaper after understanding the math better through this article.
Impermenant Loss
This article is good for understanding the basics of the math behind impermenant loss.
Derives the impermenant loss formula.