UMA Protocol belongs in the ‘synthetic asset protocol’ category subset of DeFI, with other projects in the space such as Synthetix. In traditional finance, the only way to obtain exposure to an asset would be to either (1) buy it or (2) trade derivatives of it. Previously, this had significant barriers to entry, including costly fees, difficulties accessing the necessary brokerage accounts, and other geographical barriers. Synthetic asset protocols such as UMA are DeFi’s solution to lowering the barriers to entry for asset exposure, such as cost and market access. Through UMA, PerlinX users will soon be able to create ERC20 pxTokens that are a synthetic representation of an asset (e.g. pxGold, pxOil, pxCarbon, or any other asset).