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How to get a Flash Loan

Jun 18, 2021 07:00

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To getting the normal loan is not easy, it’s mandatory to maintain balance, income and more on your account and verification is important one for this. But Flash loans are like lending to steroids.

But are they good or bad? It depends on who you are asking. For some, Flash Credit is the biggest innovative and effective tool in decentralized finance (DeFi), primarily on the Ethereum network. Flash loans provide an opportunity for their opponents to extort millions from dishonest actors using poorly protected ethics. Fast growing array of financial products dubbed flash loans are promising the crypto faithful. It is a type of uncollateralized lending that has become very popular in decentralized finance (DeFi). 

So what are flash loans all about? And how can they be used to borrow millions of dollars worth of crypto with no collateral? You’ll find answers to these questions in this article.

What is mean by Flash Loans?

How to get a Flash Loan - 2

A flash loan is relatively new type of uncollateralized lending that has become popular across a number of decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols based on the Ethereum network.

These types of loans have made headlines recently because they have been used to exploit a number of vulnerable DeFi protocols, leading to millions of dollars in losses. 

Yet, advocates argue flash loans introduce an innovative and useful tool to the world of finance for arbitrage and quick trades that weren’t possible before blockchains.

Most of us are familiar with normal loans. A lender loans out money to a borrower to be eventually paid back in full. The lender receives a payout from the borrower for temporarily parting with its money. 

Flash loans are similar, but they have the following unique properties:

  • Smart contracts: Flash loans use smart contracts, tools enabled by a blockchain that don’t let funds change hands unless certain rules are met. In the case of a flash loan, the rule is that the borrower must pay back the loan before the transaction ends, otherwise the smart contract reverses the transaction – so it’s like the loan never happened in the first place. 
  • Unsecured loan: Often lenders require borrowers to put up collateral to ensure that if the borrower can’t pay back the loan the lender is still able to get their money back. But in an unsecured loan, no collateral is required. This lack of collateral doesn’t mean the flash loan lender will not get its money back. It’s just sent back in a different way. Instead of offering collateral, the borrower needs to pay back the money right away, which brings us to our next point.
  • Instant: Usually, obtaining and fulfilling a loan is a long process. If a borrower gets approved for a loan, he or she typically has to pay it back steadily over a period of months or years. A flash loan, however, is instantaneous. The smart contract for the loan must be fulfilled in the same transaction that it is lent out. This means the borrower has to call on other smart contracts to perform instant trades with the loaned capital before the transaction ends, which is usually a few seconds.

 

This type of loan can be useful in certain instances, such as many traders looking to quickly profit from two markets.

How repaying a flash loan works

Borrowers can take collateral-free loans from lenders and use the proceeds for whatever they want. One of the most popular uses is to arbitrage discrepancies in coin prices on different exchanges. The key is that the loan, the trade and repayment are bundled into the same block of transactions being processed on the Ethereum digital ledger and are executed simultaneously.

The time from borrowing to returning a loan typically takes seconds. In the example, the transaction gets submitted to the network, temporarily lending the borrower the funds. If the trade isn’t profitable, the borrower can reject the transaction, meaning that the lender gets their funds back in either case. As far as the blockchain is concerned, the lender always had the funds. The user pays blockchain processing fees.

Using Flash Loans for arbitrage trading

Arbitrage trading is a process in which a trader purchases an asset on one exchange and sells it on another exchange to take advantage of price differences. It is as simple as buying low and selling high.

One can utilize flash loans in the case of arbitrage trading to leverage higher levels of liquidity and earn extra profit.

Assume a DAI/USDC trades at a 1:1 ratio on Uniswap, but you can buy 1 USDC for 0.99 DAI on Curve Finance. On Curve Finance, a trader who borrows 10,000 DAI will sell it for 10,101 USDC. They will then exchange them for DAI at a 1:1 ratio on Uniswap, repaying the 10,000 DAI loan and pocketing the 101 DAI gap. Arbitrage provides a mechanism to ensure prices do not deviate substantially from fair value for long periods of time. 

Debt refinancing is the second-best use case for flash loans, frequently used in situations where a user creates regular DeFi loans. More often than not, a crypto enthusiast will take out a loan only to discover that another platform offers the same loan but with better interest rates.

In that scenario, the individual could make use of the other platform with the help of flash loans. He would have to pay off the interest rate (e.g., 10%) on the original loan and borrow 5% from the second loan at the more affordable lending platform. The cycle is completed by paying back the flash loan, after which the user ends up having the loan with the better interest rate in his hands.

Collateral exchanges enable DeFi consumers to access loans from a multi-collateral lending app. For example, suppose you borrowed Dai from Compound and put Ethereum up as collateral. You will exchange the Ether collateral for Dai collateral by taking a Dai flash loan to offset the Dai borrowed.

Conclusion

Flash loans are a key financial tool used by technically savvy DeFi users. They are excellent for Arbitraging, Debt refinancing and Collateral Swaps. You can make money with Flash loans without providing your personal information and the process only takes a maximum of a few minutes. While the benefits are certainly huge, there is one big problem with providing a deal breaker for most people. In fact, flash loans are very vulnerable to exploitation, and they are the number one reason why many DeFi platforms lose millions of dollars in 2020.

Always be aware of the risks that Flash Loan offers to you and the dangers behind other DeFi products as well . When developers are carrying heavy loads, your job is to better manage risk and protect your personal financial assets from vulnerability.

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