Decentralized Finance Withdrawal Delays

Abstract

Enforcing a delay between deposits and withdrawals within decentralized finance protocols may make them more secure but less composable. A delay makes flash loan attacks more expensive, but restricts interactions between protocols. In this work, we analyse public blockchain data to determine if this concern is warranted in practice. We measure the duration between corresponding direct deposit and withdrawal function calls across several decentralized finance protocols on Ethereum. We show that direct callers of DeFi protocols typically leave assets locked in these protocols for many blocks, meaning that artificial withdrawal delays are not likely to have a negative impact on user experience.