Table of Contents for Guide to flash loans - full walkthrough

Flash loans are a very interesting topic in smart contracts.

They let you borrow an amount (tokens, or sometimes NFTs) for a fee. They have to be returned by the end of the transaction. If it is not returned then the entire transaction will fail.

A very basic example of what a flash loan is, and how it works

This article assumes you know the basics about how transactions work on Ethereum, and how a smart contract can call another contract.

Flash loans will often be set up and used in your Solidity programs. The basic idea follows this pattern:

• You call a function on a smart contract
• that smart contract function interacts with the flash loan provider, and gets a loan.
  • For example, maybe it is now the owner of 100 APE tokens
• Your smart contract function can then do whatever it needs to do, using its balance of 100 APE coin
• But before the transaction ends, your function must return 100 APE coin to the flash loan provider. You also have to pay a fee to the flash loan provider.
• If the loan is not fully repayed, the whole transaction will fail.

You can only borrow with a flash loan for a maximum time of one transaction. Either you borrow and fully repay it (with interest), or the whole transaction fails.

In depth walk through of what a flash loan is

• the ‘flash’ part of flashloan refers to the speed - the loan is taken out and repayed within a single transaction. That means you are bound by the amount of gas you can spend.
• They are just smart contracts, normally written in Solidity.
• You take out the loan by a function call, and you will get the eth or token transferred to your wallet. You can then use it - and return it by the end of the transaction. If it is not returned, the transaction will be reverted
• You also have to pay a fee for taking out the flash loan. Typical fee is around 0.1%
• People will set up flash loans to do things like arbitrage between different exchanges. For example if a token is trading at $10 on exchange A, but $12 on exchange B you could take out a huge flash loan, pocket the difference and just pay the 0.1% flash loan fee.
• One of the more popular platforms to use flash loans is Aave.
  • Aave is on Ethereum, Avalanche, Optimism, Fantom, Polygon, Artibtrum and more.
  • Aave charges 0.09%
• There is no guarantee that you can always take out a loan - it depends on the liquidity. If there is no ETH to lend out, you can’t borrow it. This is less of a problem for ETH, but becomes a problem for lower volume ERC20 tokens.

What are the use cases for flash loans

• Arbitrage - If you realise that you can trade between two tokens at different prices on different exchanges, you can use this to make a profit. If you use flash loans you can potentially borrow a lot more, and also make more profit (even after paying the fee for the flash loan).
• Debt refinancing If you have a collateralized loan, you may realise another platform has a better rate. You can use a flash loan to pay off your current (more expensive) loan, and then immediately take out the cheaper loan.

This post is incomplete and a work-in-progress
I'll update it soon and flesh it out with more info!

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