Author: Julien Prat

Contagion in Decentralized Lending Protocols: A Case Study of Compound

We study financial contagion in Compound V2, a decentralized lending protocol deployed on the Ethereum blockchain. We explain how to construct the balance sheets of Compound’s liquidity pools and use our methodology to characterize the financial network. Our analysis reveals that most users either borrow stablecoins or engage in liquidity mining. We then study the robustness of Compound through a series of stress tests, identifying the pools that are most likely to set off a cascade of defaults.

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Publications

The Economics of Constant Function Market Makers

We use microeconomic theory to describe the inner workings of Constant Function Market Makers (CFMMs). We show that standard results from consumer theory apply in this new context, endowing us with powerful tools to characterize the optimal design of CFMMs. We employ them to analyze the externalities that traders and liquidity providers exert on each other when interacting through a CFMM. Liquidity providers reduce the execution costs by flattening the bonding curve on which trades are executed. Arbitrageurs impose an adverse selection cost on liquidity providers by unfavorably rebalancing their portfolio. We show that the strengths of these two externalities are pinned down by the curvature of the bonding curve and are inversely related to each other, thereby identifying the fundamental economic tradeoff that market designers have to address.

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Insights

Back to the First Edition of the Future.s of Money in Paris

On June 16 and 17 2022, the blockchain@X chair at Ecole Polytechnique organized a unique event in Paris: The Future.s of Money. Many experts and actors from the economic, financial, digital and research worlds gathered around conferences dealing with the future and the digitalisation of money, now accessible to all.

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Publication Tokens and Icos a Review of the Economic Literature | Blockchain@X
Publications

Tokens and Icos : a Review of the Economic Literature

Tokens and ICOs: A review of the Economic Literature, with Andrea Canidio, Vincent Danos and Stefania Marcassa, This article is a part of Principles of Blockchain Systems, Synthesis Lectures on Computer Science, 2021, Vol. 9, No. 2 About the book This book is the first to present the state of…

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Publication Fundamental Pricing Utility Token | Blockchain@X
Publications

Fundamental Pricing of Utility Tokens

We propose a framework for the fundamental valuation of utility tokens. Our model endogenizes the velocity of circulation of tokens and yields a pricing formula that is fully microfounded. According to our model, tokens are valuable because they have to be immediately accessible when the services are needed, a requirement…

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Publication Reversible Composable Contracts | Blockchain@X
Publications

Reversible and Composable Financial Contracts

It is widely believed that financial markets cannot be liquid without centralised processes to manage counterparty risk. We propose an alternative method for liquidity based on reversible and composable contracts run atop a blockchain. Novel instruments for zero-collateral intermediation can be defined.

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Publication Proceedings Tokenomics 2019 | Blockchain@X
Publications

Proceedings of Tokenomics 2019

Tokenomics is an international forum for theory, design, analysis, implementation and applications of blockchains and smart contracts. The goal of the conference is to bring together economists, computer science researchers and practitioners working on blockchains in a unique program featuring outstanding invited talks and academic presentations.

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Publication an equilibrium of the market for bitcoin mining | Blockchain@X
Publications

An Equilibrium Model of the Market for Bitcoin mining

We propose a model which uses the exchange rate of Bitcoin against the US dollar to predict the computing power of Bitcoin network. We show that free entry places an upper-bound on mining revenues and we devise a structural framework to measure its value. Calibrating the model’s parameters allows us…

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