DeFi Products - Crypto Academy / S4W8 - Homework Post for @reminiscence01

Hello guys!

This is the eighth week of season four of Steemit's cryptoacademy and just like other weeks before, it promises to be fun and educative. This week, we rounded up with exploring a newfound trend within cryptocurrency users called DeFi products.

This week's activities saw professor reminiscence01 discuss extensively on DeFi products and how they work.
In the professor's lecture post some tasks will help beginners understand how DeFi products work. Therefore, this homework post is made in response to these tasks given in professor reminiscence01 lecture post.

Task 1a: In your own words, explain DeFi products and how it is shaping present-day finance.

To first understand what DeFi products are we have to understand what the word DeFi means.
DeFi simply means "Decentralized finance" which refers to a type of financial system used by Cryptocurrencies that is built on Decentralized protocols that help eliminate the total authority of one party over another, third party involvement in completing transactions, and many other issues as known with traditional financial systems.
In other words, decentralized finance provides crypto users a seamless, transparent, and permissionless mode of executing transactions through a peer-to-peer network and smart contracts embedded in the blockchain network.

Now, DeFi products are financial services products that adopt this decentralized financial system to provide crypto users a transparent, less rigid, and secure channel to perform transactions like lending, staking, liquidity mining, borrowing, and exchanging crypto assets.

In recent times, more attention has been shifted to the use of cryptocurrencies for secure and transparent transactions especially between international parties due to is speed and low cost
The creation of DeFi products has even further solidified the confidence of crypto enthusiasts in the use of cryptocurrencies for everyday transactions as DeFi products also offer the opportunity for Crypto users to earn and save with features like dApps and crypto-wallets.
The introduction of DeFi products has slowly stamped the dominance of cryptocurrency in the financial market as seen in the growth of DeFi market cap in present-day finance.

Task 1b: Explain the benefits of DeFi products to crypto users.

There are so many benefits of DeFi products and some of these benefits include;
High-cost efficiency: DeFi products allow users to execute transactions with low cost and high speed and this is due to the elimination of third-party intermediaries. In addition, the use of smart contracts in DeFi products greatly reduced the cost of carrying out a simple transaction as these transactions become automatic.

---

• Transparency: DeFi products are all built on blockchain technology, therefore, the feature of transparency becomes inherited. Every transaction carried out on any DeFi product is recorded and made public on the product's blockchain network.

---

• Reduced human error: Unlike traditional financial institutions, DeFi products greatly reduce human input in processing transactions with the help of smart contracts. Therefore, errors made by man are also eliminated.

---

• Decentralization: DeFi products offers its users total control of their assets without unnecessary financial policies to keep the users in check as in the cash of central banks and the traditional financial system. Decentralization in DeFi products increases the speed of transactions, provides absolute control and a high degree of privacy for the user.

---

• Permissionless: With DeFi products users are offered no limits or restrictions to the way they conduct their transactions. Therefore , bottlenecks experienced in conducting transactions within the traditional financial system are not experienced with DeFi products.

Task 2: Discuss any DEX project built on the following network.

• Binance Smart Chain
• Tron Blockchain

PanCake Swap

_{Source :Blockzeit.com}

The Binance Smart Chain has various types of decentralized exchanges but its most popular is the PanCake swap platform.
The Pancake swap simply offers its users the opportunity to swap and earn crypto assets (BEP-20 tokens) easily without many protocols.

Apart from being a decentralized exchange, Pancake swap also has special features like AMM (automated market maker) within its ecosystem which makes transacting with pancake swap cheaper and faster (average transaction time of 5-seconds)

As one of the biggest dApp on Binance Smart Chain provides new projects a great platform to launch their own Binance Smart Chain tokens (BEP-20).
In addition, pancake swap also enables users to become liquidity providers by farming and staking tokens which generate passive income from transaction fees. These liquidity providers are further incentivized with the native BEP20 tokenof the pancakeswap DEX known as CAKE.

Pancakeswap is accessible to users through various crypto wallets including MetaMask, Trust Wallet, WalletConnect, Binance Chain Wallet, and other options. Pancakeswap is also very transparent owing to the fact that executed transactions can easily be viewed on BSCscan.

It's strange seeing Metamask in the list above since it is an Ethereum blockchain based wallet, but this is due to the special attribute of the Binance Smart Chain which allows MetaMask to interact with BSC-based DApps which Pancake swap DEX is one.

_{Source :screenshot}

Pancake swap is a very successful DEX and it is ranked 2nd according to Coinmarket Cap . It also has $2,408,276,193 24 hour Trading Volume,1,791 coins and 9,152 trading pairs listed on the Pancake swap DEX.

---

Just swap

_{Source : Spg-pack.com}

Just like the Binance Smart Chain, The Tron blockchain has its own kind of decentralized exchange known as Justswap.

JustSwap is a decentralized exchange platform built to allow users to exchange between TRC-20 tokens and grant liquidity providers an avenue to earn passive income

All trading fees collected in Just swap will directly go to liquidity providers of the protocol in form of annualized interests (APY/APR), rather than the protocol itself.

Justswap in its own ranks have been successful so far with great user reviews , a total locked value of tokens rounding up to $1,582,400,661 as shown in the screenshot below.

_{Source :screenshot}

In addition, according to Coingecko Justswap has a $107,572,421 24 hour Trading Volume, supports 43 Coins and 227 trading Pairs as at the time of this post.

What makes this tron based exchange so wonderful is that users can lend, swap, and pool tokens using just swap.

However, Since Justswap is based on the Tron blockchain network, it can only be accessed by a Tron based wallet like TRONLINK. and receipts for transaction can only be viewed on TRONSCAN.

Task 3: In the DEX projects mentioned in question 2, give a detailed illustration of how to swap cryptocurrencies by swapping any crypto asset of your choice. Show proof of transaction from block explorer. (Screenshots needed)

In this section, I will be illustrating how to swap crypto assets in both Pancake swap and Just swap DEX projects.

Pancake swap

Here we will be using Trust wallet as the medium to access the PanCake swap platform.

• Step 1: Launch the trust wallet, click on the DApps tab, then click on the PanCake swap icon.

_{Source :screenshot}

---

• Step2: once you access the Pancake swap homepage, click on the Trade tab.

_{Source :screenshot}

---

• Step 3: Next, input the crypto assets you wish to swap by selecting them on the token list (BEP-20) which appear once you click the drop-down arrow or typing in the smart contract address of the token in the search bar.

_{Source :screenshot}

---

• Step 4: Input the amount of token to be swapped and also configure the transaction process by clicking on the settings icon.

_{Source :screenshot}

---

• Step 5: Finally, click on Swap to initiate the smart contracts protocol before Clicking on the "Approve" tab to submit the transaction on the block explorer, in this case, BSC scan.

_{Source :screenshot}

---

• You can view this transaction on the BSCscan dApp as shown in the screenshot below

_{Source :screenshot}

---

Just swap

Here we will be using Tronlink wallet as the medium to access the Just swap platform.

• Step 1: Launch the Tronlink wallet, click on the Discover tab to access the dApp features, then click on the Just swap icon.

_{Source :screenshot}

---

• Step2: once you access the Just swap homepage, click on the "swap" tab.

_{Source :screenshot}

---

• Step 3: Next, input the crypto assets you wish to swap by selecting them on the token list (TRC-20) which appears once you click the drop-down arrow or typing in the smart contract address of the token in the search bar. Here I chose to transfer from USDT to TRX.

_{Source :screenshot}

---

• Step 4: Input the amount of token to be swapped and click on the swap tab.

_{Source :screenshot}

---

• Step 5: click on the confirm button to approve the transaction.

_{Source :screenshot}

---

Note: TRX will be consumed as I do not have any bandwidth energy to consume for the transaction.

• Step 6: Next, a pop-up window will appear requiring a password. Input the required password and confirm the transaction then the swap transaction will be complete.

_{Source :screenshot}

---

• You can view this transaction on the TRONSCAN dApp in the Tronlink wallet.

_{Source :screenshot}

---

Conclusion

The financial sector has seen so much revolution since the introduction of cryptocurrencies which brought a degree of financial freedom through decentralization.
Decentralized financial (DeFi) products futher attracted investors to invest and earn in Cryptocurrencies because unlike the centralized financial products like Binance exchange or even the traditional financial institution like central banks, users through DeFi products like pancake swap, just swap, Autofarm, and other DeFi products, have been offered an opportunity to transact and earn easily in a permissionless, transparent, cost-effective, efficient and secure financial ecosystem.

I am more than excited to be part of this season's finale. I hope next season will be more thrilling.

Thank you for reading!