#5 – 🚨 Project Reveal 🚨
👋🏾 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.
Recruiting Recap
Application season is over! Thank you to everyone that applied to our organization. We will have another recruiting cycle in the Fall of 2023!
With that said, we are pleased to welcome our newest members!
Sid Wanjara
Tarun Bathini
Gabe Paciocco
Yug Mittal
Brianna Cheung
Dev Udata
Yoon Lee
Jacob Stolker
Han Huynh
Akhil Gogineni
Amit Krishnaiyer
Ananya Sehgal
Aishwarya Pasham
Vikram Pidaparthi
Ojas Rayaprolu
Savya Raghavendra
Marvin Massey
Jonathon Naour
Updates
Devs #1: Microlending Team
Context: This semester, the Microlending Team will be creating the LendingHand. Based off of the design for Kiva, LendingHand is a microlending platform that focuses on providing small, interest-free loans to entrepreneurs hoping to build / develop small businesses. One-time loans allow borrowers to create sustainable long-term income that can be repaid and used to fund new initiatives. Since the application is decentralized, it lacks the numerous intermediaries and permissions required from a traditional micro-financing firm and presents a lower barrier to entry for underbanked communities.
What We're Doing: We’re trying to build a decentralized lending protocol that allows lenders to find and fund projects they’re passionate about. We’ll be focusing on building a reliable credit score system for borrowers to gain credibility and maintain transparency on the site. Since the target audience of this project is underbanked communities, we also want to make it simple for users in other countries to convert their loans to local currency.
One Cool Thing: We’ll be doing our project in partnership with GoodDollar, a company focused on accelerating crypto adoption and providing a Universal Basic Income for all. LendingHand will be built on GoodDollar tokens, allowing us to reach developing communities who are building their crypto economy.
Goals: We hope to finish the smart contracts and front-end by the end of the semester, including a discovery page for lenders to find projects to fund, a profile and login page, and a credit score viewer for borrowers. The goals and outcome of this project may shift as we’re still working with GoodDollar to determine how LendingHand can best serve their users, but these are our goals as of right now.
Devs #2: Security Team
Context: In 2022, crypto losses totaled around 3 billion with many of those losses coming from vulnerable smart contracts. Unlike other types of code, once a smart contract is deployed, it is immutable, meaning smart contracts must be perfect before deployment. This gives rise to the industry of smart contract security which we will be diving into this semester.
What We’re Doing: During the first half of the semester the team will focus on education, reading the Ethereum Yellow Paper, and completing bug challenges. The second half of the semester will focus on deliverables including a c4 audit and a small project with UIUC-based Runtime Verification.
One Cool Thing: The team has solidity experience, but this is the first time any of us will be reading the yellow paper. While reading the yellow paper, it’s been really interesting seeing the design decisions that went into creating this incredible technology.
Goals: This semester plan to accomplish 3 things this semester being:
The whole team understands smart contract security from a high level and is able to perform basic auditing on EVM smart contracts.
Complete a C4Audit as a team
Foster relationships with partners: OtterSec and Runtime Verification, creating some sort of deliverable for Runtime Verification.
Researcher #1: Data Team
Context: This semester the Data Science Team will focus on on-chain analytics. Data science can be used to analyze and extract insights from blockchain data, such as transaction data in a cryptocurrency network. Moreover, Data science can be used to create predictive models for blockchain applications, such as predicting the price of a cryptocurrency based on historical data. The increase in on-chain analytics has pushed us to start diving into the space, and we hope to research current events in the blockchain space through a lens of data analytics
What We’re Doing: The first half of the semester the team will focus on Coin Base's new Ethereum Layer 2, Base. Thanks to Flipside Crypto, we have access to transactions on Base's test-net and are able to find analytics. We will then compare it to other Layer 2's and see whether Base has the potential to be a big player in the Layer 2 space
One Cool Thing: The team are all data science, stats, or CS majors, so it'll be really exciting to implement what we are learning in class to a real application.
Goals: We plan to accomplish 3 things this semester being:
The whole team understands blockchain analytics and are able to dive deep into the data tables and understand them.
Build a portfolio of data analytics research to highlight our teams technical and research skills.
Researcher #2: Deep-Dive Team
Context: The deep dive team takes current/ relevant news and puts on a monocle to highlight an underlying theme or idea and turns it into a newsletter
What we’re doing: Currently, we are in the midst of writing 5 separate newsletters. Each of these newsletters highlights a different topic ranging from blockchain gaming to eco friendly blockchains to whether or not web3 can shape the sports industry.
One cool thing: For one of the newsletters we got to interview Tony Plascencia, a web3 startup founder. It was fascinating to hear a little bit more about his journey through web3
Goals: We want to build a newsletter that helps beginners all around the world understand crypto in a fun way.
Researcher #3: DeFi Team
Context: Although investing wasn’t the core reason why Illini Blockchain was founded, we feel that the time has come where we are ready for an investment division within the organization.
What We’re Doing: Writing 3-4 investment theses throughout the semester, each on a different sector of DeFi that highlights what we think are the best plays on Arbitrum. Narrowing our focus on Arbitrum will allow us to explore a growing ecosystem with new and innovative protocols that we are excited to share with the community!
One Cool Thing: On February 21st and 22nd, Arbitrum had more daily transactions than Ethereum.
Goals: Become experts at creating crypto-related investment theses with a unique point of view and gain a strong understanding of the current Arbitrum ecosystem.
Wrap-Up
Thats it! Thanks for reading our 5th edition of Illini Blockchain Updates, written by Samir Sheikh. This newsletter will be shipped on a bi-weekly basis, so stay tuned for the next post on Monday, March 20th.
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. Have a great week!
Team Pictures
