Author: Michele Fabi

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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Optimal Cryptocurrency Design : Seigniorage versus Transaction Fees | Blockchain@X
Publications

Optimal Cryptocurrency Design: Seigniorage versus Transaction Fees

This paper studies how transaction fees and seigniorage, equivalent to inflation in the cryptocurrency setting, affect miner incentives and trade congestion. Each cryptocurrency miner chooses how many new transactions to group into the next block of transactions that the miner competes to validate. The successful miner earns (i) transaction fees…

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