👋🏾 Welcome to Illini Blockchain Updates - the newsletter that gives you a sneak peek into one of the fastest growing blockchain orgs in the nation.

✨ If you’re a new reader, thanks for stopping by. Feel free to check out this intro post, which explains what Illini Blockchain Updates is all about.

Purpose

Illini Blockchain Updates is a way for us to connect with our general community and partners to show you what cool stuff we have been up to. If any of our projects sound interesting or you’d just like to get involved shoot us a dm on twitter @ILL_Blockchain or email us at illiniblockchain@gmail.com.

FYI, Illini Blockchain has 2 types of members: researchers and developers. Those members are split into sub-teams that each are working on one or more cool, unique projects.

Updates

Devs #1: Sap Team

Context: In the last few months, NFTs have found their way into DeFi, as holders seek for utilities beyond just the images. One of the new use cases for NFTs in DeFi is the collateralization to take out loans. While the collateralization protocols remained sound in a bull market, a number of flaws have emerged in a bear market that leaves room to explore new ideas and frameworks.
What they do: Exploring new ideas in a lending protocol, starting with a general framework for NFT collateralization with the bidding market. Eventual creation of our own lending protocol.
Last Week: Talked to Allan (CEO of Yield) for inputs and redesigned a part of our system. We are considering an NFT price oracle for common collections. We decided to ignore tail-end NFTs (too difficult to figure out proper valuations); stick with automated NFT revaluation with off-chain floor prices and split into two sub-teams:
- Basic contract functionalities - open intent to borrow, borrow & lend.
- Referencing off-chain NFT floor price oracles for NFT valuation.
One Cool Thing: We are using a new design for NFT valuation because Chainlink’s oracle is too expensive for frequent on-chain updates/usages — Chainlink Any API costs 0.1 LINK per call! (that’s about 77 cents as of 10/30).
Struggle: 1) Getting on-chain NFT floor prices is hard (to facilitate atomic transactions). Chainlink has a great API from their oracle, but we need to check every hour or so for all of our NFTs, which will be far too pricey for our protocol. 2) Figuring out the valuation & liquidation engine
- Our plan was to have the lender and borrower meet every x time period and renegotiate the value of the NFT. Allan says users HATE having to interact with protocols, the best protocols being low friction ones. So we have to find some way to automate valuing our NFTs. This is fine for higher volume NFT collections since the floor price can be trusted. For long-tail NFTS, like a house, we have no clue how to do this.
This Week: Finish lending & borrowing functionalities; design a working version of our NFT floor price oracle; create a basic UI (frontend) for opening an intent to borrow loan (with loan term sheet).

Devs #2: Agora Team

Context: A decentralized marketplace would enable sellers to capture a greater sale price as profit and allow users to sell their items without the heavy rules of a centralized platform. Such a platform offers a competitive alternative to centralized marketplaces for buyers, due to lowered prices from decreased seller fees. It also expands the convenience of online shopping to the unbanked and more. Also, a project of this scope would help bridge a gap between crypto payments and real life assets, an area which still has a lot of room for improvement.
What they do: Creating a decentralized peer-to-peer (P2P) marketplace involving real life goods focused on eliminating fees and the centralized authority over traditional online marketplaces.
Last Week: Walked through the tokenomics of the dispute program and decided on how to allow customization of a dispute resolution process. Talked to Joe (Solana rep) about how to go about NFT metadata, changing images, and keeping a good standard for dispute token incentive. Started working on the actual contract instructions, focusing separately on the barebones of each contract right now. Continued working on the marketplace and started polishing up the dispute plan organization.
- Each protocol would have its own “court” so disputes are handled on a per-protocol basis.
One Cool Thing: ETH has a dispute resolution called Kleros, which acts similar to a decentralized court.
Struggle: Organizing PDAs (Program Arrived Addresses) and making sure all accounts are well connected and validated.
This Week: Finish NFT implementation and fully test scripts for existing instructions.

Devs #3: Bitcoin Full Node

Context: There are different types of nodes (aka computers) that run on the Bitcoin network. One type is a full node which stores the entire blockchain history.
What They Do: Working on running a full Bitcoin node. We’d like to setup full nodes for public use at the university as well as for our own learning. This will provide access to historic blockchain data, and the ability to validate & send transactions on the network.
Last Week: Got Neo4j instance set up (Graph Database; got another computer up), system design diagram (overview of what the system looks like). Planned out next steps
One Cool Thing: Golang is generally pretty lit. Working with and learning how to use Golang. Utilizing Blockchain ETL.
Struggle: Bitcoin Core RPC auth (how you talk to a Bitcoin node) + docker was finicky (for good reason, security reasons, and because I am generally not super familiar). Lots of outside work piled up this week, managing that and getting things done.
This Week: Generally 3 parts to our ETL process. (Extract) Get structured data from the full node, (Transform) transform it to our schema + save to CSV files, (Load) upload to the database. This week we’ll probably start on the Transform part, setting up the loader and connecting our two instances.

Researcher #1: Startup Team

What they do: Reaching out and working with different start-ups to do deep dive breakdowns, beta test products, & consult on projects
Last Week: Met with Underdog multiple times to onboard, give them feedback & outline tweet with them. We each wrote a Twitter thread on an interesting web3 startup. We also started outreach and have 3 potential startups we’re going to be working with!
One Cool Thing: One of our members, Muskan, co-led a Twitter Spaces with Tony Plasencia from Underdog Protocol! They discussed Illini Blockchain, what we are doing with their protocol and a bunch of other cool stuff. Shout out, Tony and Kevin!
Struggle: Midterms SUCK! Finding time outside of classes, homework, and exams to keep our forward momentum is tough. Finding real impact that we can make with these startups beyond just beta testing and giving our perspective/advice
This Week: Intro call with Spawn, continuing to meet with current partnerships to ideate and bring the coolest possible opportunities to our core contributors and community members. Also going ham on outreach.

Researcher #2: Beginner Research Team

What they do: Partnering with 101.xyz to create a beginner-level web3 course about the Ethereum Platform
Last Week: 3 jam sessions and 1 finished 101.xyz Ethereum course. Just doing the final edits and cleaning up the image for the course and then it will be published. We also started discussing future ideas for researchers down the line.
One Cool Thing: Crazy to see all of the other blockchain orgs that are building on 101.xyz and the range of topics that are being covered. Cohesively working together with other organizations to create a comprehensive introduction to Web3. Finally, have our first deliverable practically done. Feels good to complete our first goal as a team
Struggle: We need to figure out what we want to do going forward for the rest of the semester. There are a lot of paths we can take, so we need to figure out what is most interesting and of value to research.
This Week: After this meeting, we will discuss what we want to do going forward and our plan of action. So this upcoming week we will start researching and jamming on new concepts

Researcher #3: Advanced Research Team

What they do: Industry deep dives & an on-chain trend analysis on DeFi x 3rd world economies and real-world assets. They plan to cover: current applications + best companies/startups in the space, comparison to Traditional Finance (TradFi), future implications, & data analytics dashboards on relevant trends (ex: country use)
Last Week: Started assembling all the pages together, added a few new topics we wanted to talk about, working on intro and conclusion pages (key takeaways)
One Cool Thing: Using a lot of Chainalysis lately, they thought we were a private company trying to create a product so Chainalysis sent an email to us reaching out. We clarified that we were a research institution but are still interested in partnerships, so could be a potential partner in the future!? Chainalysis is the big dog in the crypto regulatory ecosystem. Worked with orgs in the past, connect them with our resources; other schools, gies, partners, etc
Struggle: Summarizing information in an efficient manner
This Week: Finish assembling the article, get feedback and make final edits so that we can publish and start brainstorming ideas for the next project.

Community Events Team

Context: We have many students who want to get involved with Illini Blockchain (141 applicants and ~450 on the email list), but there is no clear path for them to get involved.
What they do: Our goal would be to provide a path forward for community members to become more active.
- Create a bank of research topics to dive into and get published by us
- Host events with industry partners & other RSOs
- Merch giveaways
Last Week: We hosted an event with Binance, where we got their Chief Strategy Officer Patrick Hillman to speak to us. If you were unable to make it or want to learn a little bit more about what was talked about click here to see the recap notes.
One Cool Thing: We got 80+ students at our Binance event (that’s ridiculous). We are starting to build a name for ourselves and a reputation on campus.
Struggle: Reaching students via non-SM platforms (Gies Groups, CS newsletter, BIF TVs, flyers, handshake, LinkedIn event feature, IB newsletter upcoming events calendar, big permanent posters around campus). Finding unique, unorthodox ways to market ourselves and further make our name known.
This Week: Big shoutout to Elise for organizing the Binance event. Alec Chen’s Bitcoin explained talk at 6 PM Tuesday, November 1st @ Siebel Center for Design. Learn more below!

Miscellaneous

Member Shoutout #1: Over the summer, one of our co-founders, Danny Koch, did some amazing work on a project with Synchrony and their client, Fanatics. During the World Series, the project that he led went LIVE! The FanCash Rewards Card is a credit card designed to give loyal customers cashback rewards from everyday purchases. Danny's project took the initial $25 cashback reward on the card and added an MLB-themed NFT as an additional reward for the user. Unfortunately, the promotion is over, however, if you want to learn more about Danny’s project, check out this infographic.

Member Shoutout #2: Another one of our co-founders, Alec Chen, is leading a Bitcoin breakdown for our community tomorrow night. If you are interested in learning from a Bitcoin expert, sign up with this link! p.s. Potbelly will be catering our food for the night!
Internal Member Events: Our internal team hosted our first-ever potluck last week! Members were encouraged to cook their finest meals and judging by Luke Clancy’s plate, they did not disappoint. We played card games, feasted on delicious food, and chatted about everything and anything. Thank you for hosting an awesome event, Varun!
Merch: We finally got our hands on the official Illini Blockchain t-shirts! The internal team will be repping these shirts at all of our community events in the future. Thank you to Solana, NEAR, BAF, and the Gies College of Business for helping us out with this project!
Team Trips: In the next couple of weeks, we have 5 of our members traveling to Lisbon, Portugal for Solana Breakpoint, AND 3 members traveling to the bay area for ETH San Francisco! Both of these events will be valuable networking and learning experiences for our internal team. If you are going to be at these events, shoot us a DM on Twitter! We would love to meet up!

Wrap-Up

Thats it! Thanks for reading our 2nd edition of Illini Blockchain Updates, written by Samir Sheikh, Kevin Stumbris, and Luke Clancy. This newsletter will be shipped on a bi-weekly basis so stay tuned for the next post on Monday, November 14th!

If any of our projects sounded interesting or you’d just like to get involved shoot us a dm on Twitter @ILL_Blockchain or email us at illiniblockchain@gmail.com. That being said that’s all from us, as a parting gift we’ll leave you with some photos from our awesome event with the Chief Strategy Officer of Binance and UIUC Alum Patrick Hillmann!

Pictures

Illini Blockchain Updates

#2 – web3 courses, C-suite speakers, team…