I am currently a graduate student pursuing Master’s degree in Technology Management and this summer, I enrolled for one of the most interesting courses so far in my academic journey - Blockchains.
It was the last class of the course, Enterprise Database Management, which I took in my first semester here at UIUC and the professor said, “I am conducting a Blockchains course this summer. Do enroll if you are interested in learning about a world where people are spending millions on monkey pictures” and I was like “Whaaa..t?” Thus, I ended up signing up for the BADM590-Blockchains class.
The course consisted of 8 modules (1 per week) and each week, we were something given something new to crunch on. In first half, we started with learning about web3, what NFTs are and why it all matters, and took a deep dive into the core aspects of blockchains, how they work, tokens & stablecoins. The second half was an in-depth study of DeFi, DAO and DEX, followed by hands-on experience to analyze these using SQL and Tableau.
I got a chance to make multiple dashboards this summer and it was fun creating those. Here are 2 of them :
FLEX with DEX!
https://app.flipsidecrypto.com/dashboard/analyzing-swap-activities-of-weth-on-de-xs-i11DmB
A decentralized exchange (DEX) is a peer-to-peer (P2P) marketplace that connects cryptocurrency buyers and sellers. Most blockchains have a token. Let’s say I have ETH from my Ethereum network and want to trade on the Bitcoin network where the cryptocurrency is BTC. To be able to do that, I need to convert my ETH to BTC. Consider this example - Imagine you have US dollars but now that you are in India, you need the Indian currency for your usage. What do you do in that case? Convert it, right? Similarly, in cryptoworld, to convert the native currency of a blockchain, we go to DEX, which allow you to create wrapped tokens. Wrapped token’s value is pegged to another cryptocurrency and thus it can be used on a different blockchain as well. Thus, WETH is Wrapped ETH. The most popular DEXes that support these conversions are Uniswap and Sushiswap.
In this dashboard, we run SQL queries on the flipsidecrypto app, which allows you to perform crypto analytics on the blockchain data available. Our aim here was to analyze the swap activities of token and see if users are swapping WETH in or out more. We learnt that users are using WETH to swap another currency rather than getting WETH out. We also try to see the platforms that are popular among users for swapping tokens by checking the trends in daily number of transactions and swap amounts. We discover that Uniswap is the most used platform, followed by Sushiswap.
2. Ethereum Metrics:
https://app.flipsidecrypto.com/velocity/dashboard/ethereum-metrics-H8V_Kk
Ethereum, being the most popular blockchain, piqued my interest. I wanted to understand the activity on this blockchain by analyzing trends through different parameters, like blocks, transactions, difficulty of blocks, gas fees and miners involved. The dashboard was an effort to synthesize information is a systematic way and I was able to derive to some good insights like the number of blocks and transactions over the years is steadily increasing though the transactions within a block remains roughly consistent. It was interesting to see that the gas utilization (gas used of the available gas unit) was average of 40% and the number of blocks mined per day was somewhere between 5.5k-6.5k.
Here are some of my SSDs (Simple-Short-Definitions) -
Smart-contracts : Contract terms in code
DAO : Common interest + shared bank account
DEX : marketplace for crypto-traders
DeFI : Decentralized Finance (Banking and financial services in blockchain technology)
Stablecoins : cryptocurrency whose value is tied to an outside asset (such as the U.S. dollar or gold, to stabilize the price.)
Tokens : cryptocurrency specific to a blockchain (Note that the supply of some of the tokens are capped to a certain amount)
Liquidity Pools : collection of crypto assets (to facilitate crypto-trading)
During the past 8 weeks, I had to share a minimum of 2 articles crypto-related each week and review others’. So, 40 students, 80 new articles per week * 8 weeks, leading to a repository of 640 interesting articles. I learnt a lot not only from my own research but from others’ research as well. This unconventional study approach gave rise to such an amazing learning atmosphere! (All thanks to Professor Vishal Sachdev) There are atleast 20 articles that stood out to be me but I am making a note here of few that I found intriguing -
Beeple - An artist who has consistently worked on creating an artwork each day for 15 years. He went from selling art for $100 to selling an NFT for $69 Million. More on it here.
WAGMI - We’re all gonna make it! WAGMI United works at the intersection of sports and crypto. Started with 2 guys from ESPN, WAGMI became crypto community that leveraged money from NFTs and engaged in a DAO. Through this club, they actually bought a soccer team in England with an ambition to take it to the English Premier League. No matter who you are, as long as you are part of the community, the NFTs of this community give you the rights to voting that impacts decisions for the soccer team! Really cool, right?
BAT Browser - Brave browser is an internet browser like Chrome and Safari, but it is built with Adblocking in-built to the browser. You can apply for viewing in-app advertisements in exchange for a crypto token called BAT, which runs on Ethereum Mainnet. Advertisers buy advertisement slots by paying BAT, and some of that is transferred to you. So you can legit earn cryptocurrency while browsing the internet.
The picture used here in this article is generated from Dall-e-mini app! (It’s available on huggingface.io and it generates pictures from text in literally seconds). The text prompt was ‘blue and orange Bored Ape’ because I wanted to see how #illini colors would look on one of my favorite NFTs out there. Wait, did I just create a mutant of BAYC? :P
I am using this article as the last assignment of my Blockchain class :)
This is my first NFT and I look forward to creating many more! :)
The summer of 2022 will be a special one (Internship along with classes kept me busy but gave me so much exposure and so many new experiences)
Memorable Moments : Setting up my Metamask Wallet, receiving BCGIES Tokens and voting on DAO to decide on TA office hours (haha!)
My Custodians during the course : Professor Vishal Sachdev & Ki Yun Lee
Youtube Channel I strongly recommend : Whiteboard Crypto
What this course changed for me - Blockchains course has been a building block in my knowledge & career and I am now an avid user of Twitter and Discord! :D