DeFi and the Future of Money
DLT is emerging for a disruption of our current financial infrastructure. As such, Decentralized Finance (DeFi) seeks to combine open-source, peer to peer building blocks into sophisticated products using blockchain technology, seeking to disintermediate and decentralize the traditional financial service industry. This lecture will combine insights on DLT with recent applications from finance.
Next course: Spring Semester 2024
Lecturers
Bastian Bergmann, Arthur Gervais, Hans Gersbach, Lucianna Kiffer, Roger Wattenhofer, Sebastian Zelzner,
About
The lecture is targeted to students across ETH with an interest in DLT. No specific coding experience is required. During the course you will follow step by step examples. For passing the course you will take online quizzes, selected exercises, and a short exam during the class
At it’s core, Blockchain Finance aims to provide financial products and services on blockchain technologies. The combination of decentralized, smart-contract-based business logic solutions with a blockchain-based settlement layer facilitates the creation of financial services in a decentralized way. Traditional, functional roles of trusted third-party such as brokerage firms, banks, are replaced by smart contracts which fulfill the functions automatically.
The goal if this lecture is to let you understand,
- The building blocks of Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT)
- Some basic applications like smart contracts, tokens, decentralized autonomous organisations (DAOs)
- Limitations and concepts for overcoming centralized financial systems
- Recent advances on Central Bank Digital Currencies and other applications in DeFi
- The business logic behind a decentralized applications (DApps)
- How a DLT project is run within a larger organization and in the start-up context
The lecture will cover also guest speakers from companies, start-ups, and agencies.
Sessions
The lecture takes place on Thursdays at 16.15 - 18.00 in ETH Main Building Room F7
Past Guest Speakers
- Michael Egorov, CEO, external pageCurve Financecall_made
- Lorenz Breidenbach, Head of Research, external pageChainlincall_madek
- Swiss National Bank / BIS Innivation Hub
- Kari Kostiainen, ZISC ETH Zurich
- Charles d'Haussy, CEO, dYdX Foundation
- Benedikt Maurenbrecher, Partner, external pageHomburgecall_mader
- Akaki Mamageishvili, ETH Zurich & Offchain Labs
Startup Session
- Intro Talks: external pageSocioscall_made, external pagePartisiacall_made
- Venture Tech Building, external pageAxelracall_made
- Startups: external pageObligatecall_made, external pageThorWalletcall_made, external pageFriggcall_made, tba
- see Event page and Registration here:
Link to Course Catalogue