This is module 9 of 10 for the Blockchain and Cryptocurrency course.
Readings
Central Bank Digital Currencies
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Self-Directed Learning
- Buy some stablecoin and think about what role it could play in your crypto portfolio
- See if you can earn a return on your stablecoin via an exchange like Coinbase or some other platform. One possibility would be transferring it to a DeFi lending smart contract.
- Research the current state of central banks exploring the use of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs).
- Do you think CBDCs are the future of cashless societies?
- What are the pros and cons of a CBDC relative to cryptocurrency?
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Online Discussion of Module Topic
Write about what you learned about stablecoins, central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), and other cryptocurrencies. Here are some prompts:
- Explain what a stablecoin is in your own words.
- How do Tether and USDC differ?
- Explain what a CBDC is in your own words.
- What are the various DeFi applications out there offer returns on stablecoins? What is the range of offered returns? Why are some higher and some lower? What are the risks?
- What was your experience in lending out your stablecoin?
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Technical Exercise
The technical exercises for the course are complete. Students should transition into contributions to the team project work.
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Team Project Work
In this part of the project work, the business contributors and technical contributors should be working together on designing and building a user interface for their decentralized application.
–Business Contributors
Each team should make one post to the online discussion under “Other Topics” for Module 9. That post should include the following:
Step 1. Write a business description of the smart contract. How does it work? What is it’s functionality? How does it provide the service that is at the core of your decentralized application?
Step 2. Work with your technical contributors to develop a shared vision for the user interface. How will users interact with your application? How can you streamline the UI to focus it on the core functionality? In your post, write about how you answered these questions.
Step 3. Your technical contributors are working on creating a demo of the UI. Include some features of the UI demo in your post.
–Technical Contributors
Step 1. Build a sample user interface (UI) for your decentralized application. It can be a mockup or sketch using a tool like https://moqups.com/
Step 2. Create a demo that works on a local testnet or live Ropsten Testnet
Step 3. In your team GitHub branch, submit one or more screenshots demonstrating the different UI functionality.