Hello, dear friend, you can consult us at any time if you have any questions, add WeChat: daixieit

SUMMATIVE ASSIGNMENT  - FINN43715

Financial Technologies II

Masters Programmes 2023/24

Question 1: Solidity & Blockchain Economics (850 words)

Imagine you are working at a financial company that wishes to tokenize simple financial assets on the Ethereum blockchain. You are being asked to provide an overview of the steps needed to issue simple ERC20 tokens upon the Goerli Ethereum test network (testnet). Answer the following questions:

1. What tools or applications are needed to write, deploy, and test smart contracts on the (Goerli) Ethereum testnet? Name the main purpose of each tool or application and explain how they interact with each other. Use these tools to write and deploy a simple ERC20 token contract to the (Goerli) Ethereum testnet and create respective tokens to be sent to your own account. Transfer some tokens to another account.

The company would like to issue a zero-coupon bond token with face value of 100 ETH, a discount rate of 20%, and maturity of 10,000 blocks and is asking you to implement such smart contract.

2. Sketch and illustrate the design of such a zero-coupon bond smart contract and explain what features are necessary for the practical implementation of issuance and redemption.

3. Write, deploy, and interact with a Solidity contract for the above zero-coupon bond specification on the (Goerli) Ethereum testnet.

Note: Your token names should include the final four digits of your individual student ID. In your answer, make sure to provide the testnet address of the deployed contracts and evidence of the executed transaction (or a link to the respective address/transaction on the etherscan.io blockchain testnet explorer). Provide a copy of your code as appendix to your answer.

The company is concerned about issuing above tokens on public blockchains and is looking for advice on the security of the Ethereum blockchain.

4. Collect data on gas usage, fees, rewards, and block producers for at least 200 blocks (e.g., before and after the deployment of your contracts above) from the etherscan.io blockchain explorers (Ethereum main network). Provide and describe summary statistics, estimates, and illustrations to answer the following questions your company has set:

a. How decentralized is block production and why does it matter?

b. What does the reward distribution for block producers look like and how can we interpret it?

c. How expensive would transactions be if they were deployed on the Ethereum main network? Use examples from your set of transactions above.

Question 2: Decentralized Exchanges (DEX) (825 words)

Imagine you are an investor considering using the Uniswap V3 Decentralized Exchange (DEX) to generate financial returns on your capital. To test the Uniswap V3 DEX application, you are using its (Goerli) Ethereum testnet version and respective testnet (Goerli) Ether cryptocurrency to interact with the Uniswap V3 web interface at https://app.uniswap.org/. For further market research, you are using Uniswap V3’s analytics dashboard at https://info.uniswap.org/.

1. Using the example below, briefly explain basic concepts of a Constant Product Automated Market Makers (CPAMM) as employed by Uniswap V3. To illustrate the workings of the Uniswap V3 DEX, execute the following transactions:

a. Swap (some) testnet ETH for DAI stablecoin token. Describe and explain the costs associated with such a swap and provide numerical examples from your implemented swap.

b. Create a liquidity pool with an ETH-DAI pair in a suitable price range and describe your pool specifications and briefly explain why they are relevant for generating returns as liquidity provider.

c. Add liquidity in the form of the two tokens to your newly created liquidity pool.

d. Swap all remaining DAI back to ETH (or WETH). Calculate how many fees your newly created DAI-ETH pool would earn from such a transaction.

Provide evidence of each transaction above (swap, pool creation, add liquidity, swap).

2. Using the V3 analytics dashboard, consider the top ten liquidity pool pairs with respect to total value locked (TVL) for further research to make an investment decision. Answer the following questions:

a. What pool characteristics and pairs do you observe among the top ten pools?

b. How concentrated is liquidity in those pairs and what are typical price ranges?

c. Pick two different liquidity pools and explain in detail how its pool parameter specifications can be reconciled with its popularity (as measured by TVL)?

d. Which liquidity pool should you as investor consider providing liquidity to? When justifying your choice of pool, please refer to important characteristics such as fee tier, price ranges (liquidity), or TVL to generate returns. Discuss the risk-return relationship of choosing a less/more liquid pool for liquidity provision and trading.

Question 3: Decentralized Lending & Borrowing (825 words)

1. Perform a comparative analysis of stablecoin and risky (non-stablecoin) cryptoasset lending pools with respect to risk parameters and interest rate models employed by AAVE (V3). Briefly describe major differences and similarities in their choice of interest rate curves, liquidation penalties (bonuses) and collateralization rules and discuss the intuition behind those choices.

2. Describe and illustrate how you would implement a leveraged trade using decentralized lending and borrowing protocols like AAVE. Specifically, consider the following two questions:

a. Which functions would you call, what costs do you have to pay, and what issues need to be considered?

b. Explain under which conditions such a trade would be profitable.

3. Implement a leveraged long trade using the AAVE and Uniswap applications on the Goerli Ethereum testnet. Provide evidence of your transactions and evaluate whether your trade was profitable.

Overall word limit: 2500 words

SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS

Your completed assignment must be uploaded to Learn ULTRA
 no later than 11:59am (UK time) on May 3rd 2024. 

It is your responsibility to back up your work. IT issues are not a valid reason for a late submission.

You should back up your work on more than one device.

A penalty will be applied for work uploaded after 11:59am as detailed in the Late submission policy.  You must leave sufficient time to fully complete the upload process before the deadline and check that you have received a receipt. At peak periods, it can take up to 30 minutes for a receipt to be generated. 

Assignments should be typed, using 1.5 spacing and an easy-to-read 12-point font. Assignments and dissertations/business projects must not exceed the word count indicated in the module handbook/assessment brief.

 The word count should:

§ Include all the text, including title, preface, introduction, in-text citations, quotations, footnotes, and any other items not specifically excluded below.

§ Exclude diagrams, tables (including tables/lists of contents and figures), equations, executive summary/abstract, acknowledgements, declaration, bibliography/list of references and appendices. However, it is not appropriate to use diagrams or tables merely as a way of circumventing the word limit. If a student uses a table or figure as a means of presenting his/her own words, then this is included in the word count.

Examiners will stop reading once the word limit has been reached, and work beyond this point will not be assessed. Checks of word counts will be carried out on submitted work, including any assignments or dissertations/business projects that appear to be clearly over-length. Checks may take place manually and/or with the aid of the word count provided via an electronic submission. Where a student has intentionally misrepresented their word count, the School may treat this as an offence under Section IV of the General Regulations of the University. Extreme cases may be viewed as dishonest practice under Section IV, 5 (a) (x) of the General Regulations.

Very occasionally it may be appropriate to present, in an appendix, material which does not properly belong in the main body of the assessment but which some students wish to provide for the sake of completeness. Any appendices will not have a role in the assessment - examiners are under no obligation to read appendices and they do not form part of the word count. Material that students wish to be assessed should always be included in the main body of the text.

Guidance on referencing can be found on Durham University website and in the Student Information Hub.

MARKING GUIDELINES

Performance in the summative assessment for this module is judged against the following criteria:

· Relevance to question(s)

· Organisation, structure and presentation

· Depth of understanding

· Analysis and discussion

· Use of sources and referencing

· Overall conclusions