Crypto Academy / S4W8 - Homework Summary [Advanced Level] - Zethyr Finance

It's with great pleasure I am writing this piece of an article today to give a summary of how things went in week 8 of Season 4 at the Steemit Crypto Academy. The season has been great so far and it pleases my heart that we have seen the end of another learning week. So, stay with me as I walk you through the summary on Zethyr Finance.

Zethyr Finance is a lending protocol deployed on the Tron Blockchain which is equipped with features like supply, borrow, DEX Aggregator, Cross-swap, and others. This protocol allows users to supply their TRC-20 assets into any market of choice to earn certain APY depending on the contract details of the market. Likewise, users can borrow from different markets on the protocol for investment purposes or other reasons whatsoever.

One other great feature we talked about in the lecture is the stable swap features which allow interaction between the Tron and Ethereum blockchain to swap stable coin and the only stable coin available on the protocol as at the time of writing this article is USDT which can be swapped from TRC-20 into ERC-20 at the destination wallet. We highlighted the high cost involved in the stable swap on the protocol and the choice of using it solely depends on the user and purpose.

Generally, this protocol can be seen as an alternative to other dApps on the Tron blockchain that offers similar service, to either take advantage of a high APY if there exists an opportunity or adopt it due to its features. Now, let's move to the observations.

There are some observations to talk about in this part of the summary which encompasses some of the issues the students faced while interacting with the protocol and other negligent behavior of students.

Lately, some students experienced some issues as regards performing a borrow transaction on the protocol which occurred while trying to borrow an asset or repaying the borrowed asset which resulted in failed transactions and cost some students resources, unfortunately. The earliest set of students that performed the task didn't experience the issue as we have records of those that successfully carried out the transactions without any error.

The Tron blockchain consumes Bandwidth/Energy for transactions, remember that. The failed transactions came back with a result on the tronscan as Fail-Out Of Energy, an occurrence like this can be seen in two ways, either;

A large percentage of the students that experienced failed borrowing transactions fall into the second category although we have a few in the first category too. Let's explore the practical side of the second category.

From the last screenshot above, the TRX burned to accommodate the energy required for the transaction has reached the limit of 50 TRX and this triggered failed transaction. Likewise, if you have sufficient energy and the energy required for the transaction is above the contract's fee limit, then, failed transaction would be triggered.

So in the case of Zethyr Finance borrow feature, the Tron fee has increased such that the borrowing transaction fee now exceeds the contract limit, and this caused failed transactions. How can this be corrected? The simple way to do is through contract upgrade, once the developer notices this, they just have to increase the fee limit on the smart contract, this might not be easily done by mere editing as we all know that blockchain is immutable, but another smart contract can be written for the borrow feature which will be an intermediary smart contract connected to the previous one to maintain the same address of the contract but in this case, all borrow transaction will run on the new contract deployed for successful transactions on the feature to be restored.

It is noticed that some students failed to read the questions properly to fully answer every question in each section. Apart from the students that had issues with the borrow feature, some didn't answer all that is expected in each question, as such I will advise the students to pay attention to every question asked and answer them accordingly. Little negligence as such steals away valuable marks from a student. In addition, the proper analysis should be worked on as many students were seen to be bringing in another context that is different from the scope of the lecture. Kindly take note.

The last question was included to see what individual students have to say about the protocol. While many believe they can use the protocol to take advantage of high APY and see it as an alternative for their desired transactions, others were not pleased with the fee paid on the protocol to execute a transaction. Both parties have a valid point and that's exactly what I want to see in that section.

Let's take a look at the statistics of participation in the last week's Zethyr Finance lecture, including the score distribution and performance of the students. A total number of 48 was received, all visited timely and it is ensured that none is missing out on the tag as the attention of those who made the mistake was called and they timely made corrections. See the performance table below:

Excellent represents grades within 9 - 10, Very Good for grades within 8 - 8.9, Good for grades within 6 - 7.9, Average for grades within 5 - 5.9, Below Average for grades below 5, Plagiarized are the contents that are found to have been copied from another source without proper reference and Invalid are incomplete articles/Users Powering down/Insufficient SP for the Advanced level. There were no record of plagiarism this week but an invalid entry exist where a user falsified the claim of transaction. Let's see the distribution on the charts below.

In conclusion, it is important that you creatively explore all parts of the questions in a way that there would be no room for doubt about your knowledge on the task given, in that way, your article stands out in the crowd and you'd take the credit. If you are having a tough time with practical homework tasks, the comment section is there for you to ask questions to be sure you are in the right way. In addition, use Grammarly to take care of likely grammatical errors. Thanks to you all.