Hi, I am developer, explorer, huslter, anything but a nerd.
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Okay, let’s back up a little. 10 Weeks ago, and I distinctly remember expressing this thought to one of my friends, I was a third-year Electrical Engineering undergrad at IIT Delhi confused about whether or not to pursue blockchain development so much so that I almost chose my courses in a way that won’t leave me with time to do dev stuff (thank god I didn’t do that). The reason behind this was that I was feeling very directionless, as I’m sure most of the people starting out in blockchain do since the resources are all scattered online and there was not much precedent in my college to motivate me. But not even 2 weeks pass by and I get a mail, “We had a great time talking to you and you should pat yourselves on the back (and tweet about it ) for being in the top 0.5% of the total applicants.”. At first, I could not believe what just happened. I was very happy, almost dancing but at the same time I was a little anxious to see where this journey takes me and more importantly, whether will I be able to take full advantage of this awesome opportunity that I have just received.
And surely, this fellowship has been a major turning point in my life. I’ll explain my entire experience in sections.
The ETHIndia Fellowship 3.0 is an 8-week mentor-led program with 2 parallel tracks. Both tracks are open to all individuals.
Track Wei is for a select set of top Web2 devs with a knack for learning about Web3. This track aims to familiarise them with the technology and tools required to transition to Web3 with the help of training and mentoring.
Track Gwei is for intermediate Web3 developers who want to go all-in and focus solely on building projects. The fellowship will provide mentorship as well as a launchpad for the development of production-level tools and products in the Web3 space.
I was selected for the Wei Track.
More information can be found at
https://eif3.devfolio.co/overview
My eight-week fellowship was divided into two phases:
In the first four weeks, we were given weekly challenges so as to get us comfortable with writing smart contracts, deploying them, interacting with them, and basically building whole full-stack Dapps. This was done through the speedrunethereum challenges.
https://speedrunethereum.com/builders/0xb511cc1C99A779c74e00C858A29C5C93C47e6041
You can find my submissions in my GitHub repo as well.
https://github.com/etikshajain/scaffold-eth-challenges
Me and my colleague @proxima424 (twitter) once decided to build a ‘crypto-native’ NFT rather than just some image or video content. So, we build ProofOfAge NFT - This is a Dynamic NFT that is the proof of your age on Ethereum. It displays the time that passed since you made your first Ethereum transaction and hence is what we like to call, “Etherage”. After going through the scaffold-eth challenges, I got the motivation of completing the frontend for the same :P
https://github.com/etikshajain/proof-of-age-nft
Each of us was assigned a Defi protocol to research and present to the whole team. I was assigned Reflexer Finance and here’s my PPT.
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Zb1hY2fW8j5g2y1TwhXTv9ytvvJd_S70yk-Z9Yfe4hw/edit?usp=sharing
I was also intrigued by Uniswap and PoolTogether protocols, so I decided to go deep into both of these. In fact, my major project idea is inspired by PoolTogether!!
I read the Uniswap whitepaper (very fine!) and tried to follow its core smart contracts. But if you look at them, these contracts are not commented which took me a lot of time to follow. So I build a repo with properly commented code that might be helpful for beginners. Please feel free to contribute :)
https://github.com/etikshajain/understanding-uniswap-v2-contracts
Right now, it may sound like the fellowship was all about projects and DeFi and coding but believe me, it was so much more than that. Each one of us was assigned a mentor who was always there for all of our silly doubts and career confusion in this field.
One of the most amazing parts of the fellowship was the workshops/talks given by the people who have actually made it in this field and are considered “alphas'“ in this field. I would like to share some of the talks that I attended.
We also had a lot of fun events like meme competitions and coffee-with-fellow nights. Some of the memes made by my fellow mates were really hilarious and I would really like to post a couple of them
The start of the fifth week was a serious one. Each one of us had to submit a project proposal for a product that we were going to build completely for the next four weeks. I was excited and scared at the same time. Excited because I will be working on a real project with proper guidance wherever needed, but scared because what if I lose this opportunity to work towards building something too ambitious? Thankfully, it turned out well. I wanted to build something in DeFi majorly because I have never actually “built” anything around it and I found it very exciting.
As I mentioned before, I was intrigued by the poolTogether protocol. For those who don’t know, poolTogther is a no-loss DeFi protocol that gives users a chance to win the yield of all depositors as prizes. Another idea I was inclined towards was that of a yield aggregator like yearn finance. Yield aggregators, also known as ‘auto-compounders’ or ‘yield optimizers’ are tools that hunt for protocols/pools to maximize yields on invested capital. They also automatically re-invest interest gained on yields, which for an individual user, would be inefficient due to gas fees.
Finally, after a lot of brainstorming, I combined the two ideas, and that led to PoolMaximum.
Pool Maximum is a DeFi protocol that pools user funds, maximizes yield and randomly distributes a majority percentage of the interest earned to a winner, while the rest is proportionally distributed to the losers.
The protocol works in the following steps:
Users deposit ETH into the prize pool before the deadline.
Prize pool deposits funds into Yearn Finance vault, distributing tickets to users.
The Prize pool burns shares and withdraws the amount and interest after a certain time.
A winner is chosen randomly, receiving initial principal plus the majority of interest.
Losers receive the initial principal plus the rest of the interest divided by the total tickets minted in the pool-maximum to date.
The interest earned is maximized using the yearn finance vaults.
No user goes profitless and receives prizes based on their loyalty to the protocol.
https://github.com/etikshajain/pool-maximum
https://github.com/etikshajain/pool-maximum-frontend
There’s still a long way ahead of the PoolMaximum project which involves completing this project in a way that it could be launched and work on even more exciting projects and never let that developer spirit die.
Looking back, it's hard to believe that I ever considered giving up on pursuing this field. The EthIndia Fellowship has been an incredible experience, one that has opened my eyes to the boundless potential of blockchain technology and the vast possibilities that lie ahead. I have had the opportunity to work alongside some of the brightest minds in the industry, and I have been constantly challenged and inspired to push my limits and knowledge.
The possibilities are endless, and I am only just getting started.
@JainEtiksha
