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Machine Learning systems rely on data for training, input and ongoing feedback and validation. Data in the field can come from varied sources, often anonymous or unknown to the ultimate users of the data. Whenever data is sourced and used,…
This paper develops a model to evaluate the viability of blockchain markets as the sole venue for price formation. Blockchains clear at discrete intervals called block time, and transactions are executed sequentially according to priority…
Decentralized Finance (DeFi) leverages blockchain-enabled smart contracts to deliver automated and trustless financial services without the need for intermediaries. However, the public visibility of financial transactions on the blockchain…
Stablecoins are one of the most widely capitalized type of cryptocurrency. However, their risks vary significantly according to their design and are often poorly understood. We seek to provide a sound foundation for stablecoin theory, with…
This paper maps the emerging market for decentralized credit in which ERC 4626 vaults and third-party curators, rather than monolithic lending protocols alone, increasingly determine underwriting and leverage decisions. We show that modular…
Online portals include an increasing amount of user feedback in form of ratings and reviews. Recent research highlighted the importance of this feedback and confirmed that positive feedback improves product sales figures and thus its…
Bitcoin, as well as many of its successors, require the whole transaction record to be reliably acquired by all nodes to prevent double-spending. Recently, many blockchains have been proposed to achieve scale-out throughput by letting nodes…
Although Bitcoin was intended to be a decentralized digital currency, in practice, mining power is quite concentrated. This fact is a persistent source of concern for the Bitcoin community. We provide an explanation using a simple model to…
Traditional blockchain design gives miners or validators full control over transaction ordering, i.e., they can freely choose which transactions to include or exclude, as well as in which order. While not an issue initially, the emergence…
Smart contract access control mechanisms can introduce centralization into supposedly decentralized ecosystems. In our view, such centralization is an overlooked risk of smart contracts that underlies well-known smart contract security…
Bitcoin is the first successful decentralized global digital cash system. Its mining process requires intense computational resources, therefore its usefulness remains a disputable topic. We aim to solve three problems with Bitcoin and…
Much research in systemic risk is focused on default contagion. While this demands an understanding of valuation, fewer articles specifically deal with the existence, the uniqueness, and the computation of equilibrium prices in structural…
Decentralized Ledger Technology, popularized by the Bitcoin network, aims to keep track of a ledger of valid transactions between agents of a virtual economy without a central institution for coordination. In order to keep track of a…
Decentralized Finance (DeFi) is a nascent set of financial services, using tokens, smart contracts, and blockchain technology as financial instruments. We investigate four possible drivers of DeFi returns: exposure to cryptocurrency market,…
Permissionless blockchains such as Bitcoin have excelled at financial services. Yet, opportunistic traders extract monetary value from the mesh of decentralized finance (DeFi) smart contracts through so-called blockchain extractable value…
Cryptocurrency networks such as Bitcoin have emerged as a distributed alternative to traditional centralized financial transaction networks. However, there are major challenges in scaling up the throughput of such networks. Lightning…
Decentralization for data storage is a challenging problem for blockchain-based solutions as the blocksize plays the key role for scalability. In addition, specific requirements of multimedia data calls for various changes in the blockchain…
Liquid staking has become the largest category of decentralized finance protocols in terms of total value locked. However, few studies exist on its implementation designs or underlying risks. The liquid staking protocols allow for earning…
This paper proposes a model that enables permissionless and decentralized networks for complex computations. We explore the integration and optimize load balancing in an open, decentralized computational network. Our model leverages…
The democratization of artificial intelligence through decentralized networks represents a paradigm shift in computational provisioning, yet the long-term viability of these ecosystems is critically endangered by the extreme volatility of…