Maybe I am a tad bit slow, but what is the point of borrowing and lending with defi. Is it just the interest rates? If I need a loan i need to over collateralize it meaning I need money to borrow money. Other than way of getting insane yield are the other use cases I am missing?
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Thank you for documenting and sharing your journey into the DeFi process. I’m in the middle of the DeFi 101 course myself and find it daunting - there’s a steep learning curve for me as I am very new to this crypto/blockchain technology and does not know much about the finance world either. This walkthrough of yours will come in handy in the future once I’ve understood the basics of DeFi and am ready to go thru this process myself.
@CryptoLilies, there’s a new version of this course? Can you respond with the course title? I would love to take that course - I need to take the new version as this current one has been a toughie for me. Thanks!
@MattPerry FYI I was told by my adviser that this course is being updated to reflect the latest developments in blockchain.
Thanks for the info! Ill redo the class when they update it for sure.
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Holy… This is an insane answer. Thanks for the elaborate contribution 
No worries @Raneil and @jak! I’m really glad that this lil guide has been useful to you!
Also, I totally understand how you feel atm, @Raneil… The whole crypto space is very daunting… Every time I feel as if I’m well rounded in my knowledge, some random crypto company decides to make a new piece of revolutionising tech and suddenly, I’m back to square one 
With crypto, you just have to be learning everyday! The DeFi space is still quite young; if you think about it, where your crypto knowledge is right now, is much more than most people who only know coinbase and binance!
We are ahead of the pack! Just keep learning, my friend! We are all still new in this fast-paced industry 
Kovan faucet has been down for months and I can find no viable alternative online. I think this assignment needs updating in the course and concise step by step instructions provided on how to carry out this assignment.
Tried getting eth or dai into a Maker wallet but it wouldn’t take less than 10,000 dai!
So I did manage to put some dai on compound and started accruinbg some interest before withdrawing it again. All these manouevres with small amount was not really worth it and I lost quite a bit on gas fees.
I think that DAI instability could be a somewhat good choice for investors, as if the coin goes up 6 cents, and say, for example, you have a hundred million in DAI, that would be a 6 million mark up. Of course this is impractical but it could be used as a long-term very-low-risk investment strategy.
I am into AAVE for lending/borrowing today, and some good insights I had were:
1 Lending and Borrowing the same crypto asset secures you from a volatility liquidation between those cryptos
2 If you want it to be more risky, swap the borrowed token for another one, for high yield farming or trade for example, the main risk is the volatility between the 2 assets
3 Trading borrowed amount is simple, just swap it for USDC for example, if the borrowed crypto value goes 20% down, you can repay the debt using less 20% USDC (like a trading profit, but more secure as you can keep the borrowed amount for long terms)
I had also made a excel sheet for these lending/borrowing/liquidation/farming/staking data, really nice to make a data-driven strategy where you can see all your relevant crypto assets staked numbers, understand the risks from liquidation and all the possible profits, if you want it just connect and send me a message on LinkedIn, and I will send it to you for free of course!
https://www.linkedin.com/in/bruno-trevelin-995372156/
The test net on the Kovan Ethereum network had an error when I clicked the link. Then it asked me to connect my wallet so I didn’t do it.
I’m glad that I took this course, I had no idea how big defi is, and I didnt realize just how many different facets there are to it; between money markets, synthetics etc.
The one thing that has confused me about defi, is the collateral aspect of it it. Is it a 1:1 ratio of collateral, so if I want to borrow $1,000 in a defi, do I need to put up $1,000 in collateral? I was hoping this would have been covered in the course but I didn’t hear it.
Other than that I found Metamask to be very easy to use, I am looking forward to defi on Cardano as I am certain that the fees will be much lower than the gas fees on Ethereum.
I’ve been using Nexo.io for at least a year for CDPs and gaining interest (8% - 12%) on my assets. While it’s custodial and not purely decentralized, it’s been a handy service.
They kind of make the job easier for borrowing/lending, using liquidity pools and exchanging/trading instruments by offering a simplified GUI that can be catchy and easy to read. https://polymarket.com/
It works with USDC, but you can also do the conversion: https://medium.com/stakingbits/guide-to-bridging-dai-from-polygon-to-xdai-and-bsc-194013e1fe68
It apparently looks like a ‘binary options website’, but I think it translates how to smart contracts work in areas like borrowing/lending, swaps, asset/token trading, ‘gas fee’ and the way to minimizes it, liquidity pool, etc. All these features are comprised and shown as a simplistic web for making predictions of real-world events.
There are other market opportunities however the outcome can be complex without the proper knowledge, but that knowledge is worth it!
The collateralization was not as clear to me and need to review again or do more research. Looking forward to an update or more recent course that focuses on AAVE for lending and borrowing.
I think DAI will the the leader to lending, borrowing and staking crypto. My goal is to stake every crypto on ledger hardware wallet because it secure offline.
Fees are so high and I can’t seem to get the Kovan Testnet to work. Is there an update to this assignment?
Thanks for putting all this up here. Unfortunately, i couldn’t get past Step #1 and get Testnet ETH. I went to MyCryptoWallet and requested KovanEth. It said the transaction was pending but then nothing else happened.
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You can also try with this guide:
https://studygroup.moralis.io/t/faq-how-to-get-kovan-eth-from-app-mycrypto-com/35389/3
Hope it helps 
Carlos Z
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I have tried throughout the workaround to open a CDP but those gas fees are so discouraging 
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