FINS5547 Group Assignment
Due: 6:05pm AEST, 12th August 2023
This assignment is worth 40% of your final assessment
Group Presentation
You are required to research a DeFi application and present your findings. Your group will be assigned
a DeFi application by the lecturer.
You will be required to record and upload a presentation on your DeFi application. The content should
be pitched at a level that is understandable to your classmates. You might have an easier time doing
this project after week 7, but please start planning for your project now.
Your presentation (and associated recording) should not be longer than 10 minutes. Marks will be
deducted for overly long presentations. It is up to the group to decide whether all the members are in
the presentation video or not.
You will also be required to submit an individual report on your DeFi application.
Individual Report
The individual project report will cover the same material but in written format. It should be no longer
than 3 pages and 1500 words. It should have clear section titles and structure. Marks will be deducted
for a lack of clarity, or for poor formatting.
The report can be exactly the same as what the rest of your group submits. If a member does not
contribute to the group project at all, the others can hold back the report from this member. Hopefully,
this will incentivise everyone to participate.
Please also include references. Feel free to use any referencing style you like. References won’t count
towards the word count.
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Questions You Should Think About
Here are some pointers to what you could cover in your video *and* your individual assignment
report. You should attempt to cover all points.
• What is this DeFi application? What does it do / what problem is it trying to solve?
• Comment on the extent of the decentralisation of this application. Why decentralise at all?
What are the costs and benefits of decentralisation?
• Does the project have a token? If not, should the project have a token? What is the benefit?
If it has a token, can the project work without the token? What purpose does the token serve
according to the project team? What purpose do you think the token serves?
• What are the main strengths and weaknesses of the application? Can you think of ways of
improving upon/rectifying some of the weaknesses?
• What could happen in the future that could make this project fail?
More advanced submissions should also consider:
• Has the project been significantly "pre-mined"?
• Has the code been independently audited?
• What is the development activity on GitHub like in comparison to similar projects?
• What chain does it run on? Or what layer does it run on L1, L2, etc?
• Does it connect with other chains through a bridge? Or how does it interact with other tokens?
• Has there been any changes since it was originally deployed? If so, why and what did it change?
(e.g. v2 or bug fixes)
• What sort of aml /kyc / regulations does this have, if any? Do you think it would be a good idea
/ can you think of any beneficial regulations?
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DeFi Applications
The following DeFi projects will be allocated to each group randomly.
• Aave - Lending platform
• Balancer - Decentralised exchange
• Pancake Swap - Decentralised exchange
• GMX - Derivatives exchange
• dYdX - Derivatives exchange
• Synthetix - Synthetics
• Yearn Finance - Yield Aggregator
• Liquity - Stablecoin note: please analyse the entire Liquity ecosystem, not just the stablecoin
• Lido - Staking Protocol
• Opyn - Options
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Marking Details
Your mark is divided between an individual and a group component. The individual component will
comprise 10% of your final mark for this unit, while the group component comprises the other 30%.
If the lecturer believes that there is a large disparity in the contribution across group members then
different members of the group may receive different marks. In this regard, please see the Individual
Project Report.
Group Presentation
Mark Explanation
0− 3 Did not submit or barely attempted to answer any of the proposed questions.
3− 5 Presentations did not attempt to answer all of the five main questions, showed serious
lack of understanding of the projects and wider ecosystem, were characterised by poor or
unprofessional presentation style.
5− 7 Presentations lacked charts, were unclear or not engaging. They did not show any critical
analysis and were purely descriptive.
8− 10 Presentations adequately explained how the project works and what problems it tries to
solve. They employed some critical analysis but did not answer more advanced questions.
11− 12 Presentations also answered some of the more advanced questions, critically analysed the
protocol and compared it to competitors.
13− 15 Presentations also answered all of the advanced questions in an engaging, professional
presentation style.
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Individual Report
Mark Explanation
0− 1 Did not submit or barely attempted to answer any of the proposed questions.
2− 3 Reports did not attempt to answer all of the five main questions, showed serious lack of
understanding of the projects and wider ecosystem, were characterised by poor / unpro-
fessional presentation style.
4− 5 Reports lacked charts, were unclear or not engaging. They did not show any critical
analysis and were purely descriptive.
6− 7 Reports adequately explained how the project works and what problems it tries to solve.
They employed some critical analysis but did not answer more advanced questions.
8− 9 Reports also answered some of the more advanced questions, critically analysed the pro-
tocol and compared it to competitors.
10 Reports also answered all of the advanced questions in an engaging, professional presen-
tation style.
Getting Started
You can use any software of your choice for making the video recording. Here is one possibility:
https://atomisystems.com/activepresenter/free-edition/ It is also possible to record yourself in Power-
Point itself. If you go this route, please make sure that you export a video file at the end and submit
that. Some details of how to do this can be found here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8u_QDZLqMs
Submission
To submit this assessment please upload one final video to OneDrive (see the file on Moodle for in-
structions), or Google Drive, or some such website, and post the link to the video as your submission.
Please make sure that the sharing settings for the file are set to be accessible by anyone who has the
link.
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Academic declaration
By submitting this assignment you acknowledge the following:
The work you submit must be your own group’s work. Submission of work partially or completely derived from
any other person or jointly written with any other person is not permitted. The penalties for such an offense may
include negative marks, automatic failure of the course, and possibly other academic discipline. Assignment
submissions will be examined manually.
Relevant scholarship authorities will be informed if students holding scholarships are involved in an incident
of plagiarism or other misconduct.
Do not provide or show your assignment work to any other person outside your group - apart from the teaching
staff of this subject. If you knowingly provide or show your assignment work to another person for any reason,
and work derived from it is submitted you may be penalised, even if the work was submitted without your
knowledge or consent.
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