I am currently pursuing my Master’s in Technology Management(MSTM) from the University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign. This summer I enrolled in the Blockchains course (BADM 590) offered by Professor Vishal Sachdev. In this article, I would like to share my experience and learnings from this course. Without further ado, let’s get started!

Why this course?

Blockchains were alien to me before joining this course. Though I wanted to develop an understanding of this domain, a lot of questions popped up in my head which made me rethink my decision to register for this course. I usually practice the saying – “If in doubt, don’t do it” in such situations. I am really glad I did not use that approach and listened to my intuition 😊

What made me signup for it? – The technology is ‘in’ right now and it is always good to upskill oneself with emerging technologies. I have already studied under Professor Vishal during the Spring semester. I learned a great deal about database management and he ensures the course is interesting with guest lectures and creative projects.

What did I learn from the course?

Blockchains is a very well-designed course that spans over 8 weeks. It covered Blockchain basics such as Decentralization, Web3, and how blockchains operate in the first four weeks and moved to advanced concepts such as Decentralized Exchanges (DeFi), Liquidity Pools(LPs), and Stablecoins in the latter part of the course. The last four weeks provided hands-on experience with blockchain analytics tools such as Flipside Crypto (I will talk about one of the dashboards I created using this tool in the subsequent sections) where one can test and apply concepts learned in class to real-world scenarios.

Additionally, the course introduced me to popular Twitter and Discord channels to learn about blockchain’s latest developments, encouraged me to inculcate ‘Netiquette’, and helped me improve my narrative writing skills through the creation of dashboards and LinkedIn/Twitter posts. I also got to learn about interesting Play-to-Earn games such as Axie Infinity and Metaverses such as Decentraland and Vertikal. Most importantly, it provided me an opportunity to connect and engage with experts in this field through guest sessions.

How did the course add value to my experience?

Let me explain this through two interesting assignments I worked on. The first one is Industry Analysis where students need to choose an industry and write about its Blockchain adoption. I opted for ‘Retail’ as I have worked in this industry for 3 years and have seen challenges in supply chain management firsthand. I was curious to know how Blockchain technology can add value to this domain. Through this exercise, I learned how Blockchain can transform retail by strengthening Inventory Management, Customer Identity Management, Prevention of Counterfeit goods and fraud, Product Contracts, and Loyalty Programs to name a few, through real-world use cases.

The next one is my final project where I need to replicate a Dune (another Blockchain analytics tool) dashboard in Flipside Crypto. This assignment required me to identify a topic of interest, choose a relevant Dune dashboard, and build the necessary conceptual understanding to understand queries and visualizations to recreate it on Flipside Crypto. Besides this, I need to come up with an additional analysis that can help deep dive further and derive key insights. Furthermore, visualizations need to be created using the findings and insights should be explained in the form of a narrative. I picked Decentralized Exchanges (DEXs) and created a dashboard on Uniswap vs Sushiswap – User and Transaction analysis.

To put things in perspective, a decentralized exchange (DEX) is a peer-to-peer marketplace where users can trade cryptocurrencies in a non-custodial manner i.e., without the need for an intermediary to facilitate the transfer and custody of funds. Uniswap is the largest DEX that operates on the Ethereum network (a decentralized global software platform powered by blockchain technology). It was launched in November 2018 and has had a 70% market share on Ethereum over the last year. On the other hand, Sushiswap is another DEX, launched in September 2020, that originated from Uniswap and has slightly different functionalities.

In this project, I worked on the analysis of 5 key metrics related to Uniswap and Sushiswap transactions.

(i) Unique users

(ii) Market share

(iii) Monthly transactions

(iv) Single DEX (Uniswap/Sushiswap) users

(v) Average Transactions per User

The analysis and insights are presented in the dashboard below.

https://app.flipsidecrypto.com/dashboard/uniswap-vs-sushiswap-user-and-transaction-analysis-kD2hOT

The above assignments and the course, in general, helped me enhance my industry knowledge in retail as well as build my understanding of blockchains while improving my analytical abilities as well as writing skills. All these are transferable skills that would be crucial to thriving in my future roles.

Final Thoughts

In conclusion, blockchains are revolutionizing economies and are the need of the hour. I believe it is important for everyone to learn about them as they are soon going to impact every walk of life.

Lastly, I would like to thank Professor Vishal and TA Ki Yun Lee for designing this course and for the amazing learning experience. I am sure it is going to be bigger and better for upcoming cohorts and I highly recommend this course to incoming MSTM students.