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Exchanges acquire excess processing capacity to accommodate trading activity surges associated with zero-sum high-frequency trader (HFT) "duels." The idle capacity's opportunity cost is an externality of low-latency trading. We build a…
We analyze 15,097 blocks proposed for inclusion in Ethereum's blockchain over an eight-minute window on December 3, 2024, during which 38 blocks were added to the chain. We classify transactions as exclusive -- appearing only in blocks from…
Half a decade after Bitcoin became the first widely used cryptocurrency, blockchains are receiving considerable interest from industry and the research community. Modern blockchains feature services such as name registration and smart…
A transaction fee mechanism (TFM) is an essential component of a blockchain protocol. However, a systematic evaluation of the real-world impact of TFMs is still absent. Using rich data from the Ethereum blockchain, the mempool, and…
This paper studies the effects of unexpected changes in US monetary policy on digital asset returns. We use event study regressions and find that monetary policy surprises negatively affect BTC and ETH, the two largest digital assets, but…
As a key enabler of Web3, Ethereum has long faced scalability challenges. The recent EIP-4844 upgrade aims to alleviate the scalability issue by introducing the ''blob'', a new data structure for Layer-2 rollups that enables off-chain…
Decentralized financial (DeFi) applications on the Ethereum blockchain are highly interoperable because they share a single state in a deterministic computational environment. Stakeholders can deposit claims on assets, referred to as…
There are a multitude of Blockchain-based physical infrastructure systems, operating on a crypto-currency enabled token economy, where infrastructure suppliers are rewarded with tokens for enabling, validating, managing and/or securing the…
Smart contracts are small programs that run autonomously on the blockchain, using it as their persistent memory. The predominant platform for smart contracts is the Ethereum VM (EVM). In EVM smart contracts, a problem with significant…
The Sandbox metaverse LAND non-fungible token (NFT) prices increased by than 300 times (in USD) between December 2019 and January 2022, but when measured in its native utility token (SAND), the increase is only 3 times. Depending on how…
Recent developments in the global liberalization of equity and currency markets, coupled to advances in trading technologies, are making markets increasingly interdependent. This increased fluidity raises questions about the stability of…
In this work, we explore the class of Ethereum smart contracts called the administrated ERC20 tokens. We demonstrate that these contracts are more owner-controlled and less safe than the services they try to disrupt, such as banks and…
Financial speculators often seek to increase their potential gains with leverage. Debt is a popular form of leverage, and with over 39.88B USD of total value locked (TVL), the Decentralized Finance (DeFi) lending markets are thriving.…
Blockchains protect an ecosystem worth more than $500bn with strong security properties derived from the principle of decentralization. Is today's blockchain decentralized? In this paper, we empirically studied one of the least…
Ethereum has emerged as the most popular smart contract development platform, with hundreds of thousands of contracts stored on the blockchain and covering a variety of application scenarios, such as auctions, trading platforms, and so on.…
This paper delves into the spectrum of credit risks associated with decentralized stablecoin issuance, ranging from overcollateralized lending to business-to-business credit. It examines the mechanisms, risks, and mitigation strategies at…
DEX, or decentralized exchange, is a prominent class of decentralized finance (DeFi) applications on blockchains, attracting a total locked value worth tens of billions of USD today. This paper presents the first large-scale empirical study…
Payment channel networks (PCNs) such as the Lightning Network offer an appealing solution to the scalability problem faced by many cryptocurrencies operating on a blockchain such as Bitcoin. However, PCNs also inherit the stringent…
Currently cryptocurrencies and Decentralized Finance (DeFi), which enable financial services on public blockchains, represents a new growing trend in finance. In contrast to financial markets, ruled by traditional corporations, DeFi is…
Blockchain enables peer-to-peer transactions in cyberspace without a trusted third party. The rapid growth of Ethereum and smart contract blockchains generally calls for well-designed Transaction Fee Mechanisms (TFMs) to allocate limited…