Student competition - Liechtenstein
Training the next generation of asset managers
We’ve partnered up with the University of Liechtenstein to run the world’s first student on-chain fund management competition.
MAMA’s Executive Director, Hansjoerg Hettich and John Orthwein, Risk Engineer for the Melon Protocol, gave the students an introduction to the basics of on-chain asset management and then helped them to set up their own on-chain funds using the Melon Protocol.
The students were then asked to manage their portfolios for the next three months, with the goal of outperforming ETH. This project gave students the opportunity to learn by doing; by setting up their funds they learned basic portfolio management skills, how to interact with decentralised exchanges (DEX), how to place a trade and familiarise themselves with DeFi tools and protocols.
MAMA sponsored the fund set-up costs of roughly $10-20 and ‘invested’ 0.5 ETH (at the time, about $70) into each fund. It’s important to note that MAMA retained custody of these assets at all times. During the process, MAMA gave the students regular guidance and support on issues relating to fund management (e.g. fees, risk and compliance etc.) as well as the latest news in the crypto space.
“Everything around us is becoming more technical and more digital. Finance will be no exception. The investment manager of the future will necessarily be more technical and we see this as a chance to get these tools into the hands of people now who will be the portfolio managers, risk managers, analysts and controllers in the very near future.”
At the end of the three months we awarded a prize to the best performing team. The whole process was a great learning experience for us at MAMA as well as for the students. We received lots of useful feedback about interacting with the protocols and students also raised important issues, such as the lack of liquidity on DEXs. We very much hope to repeat this competition next year. Today’s students are tomorrow’s asset managers so we are motivated to work with students and give them skills, knowledge, experience in on-chain asset management.
If you would like more information about this competition - or would like to enquire about running your on on-chain student competition, please do get in touch with us here.