Blockchain smart contracts for decentralized matching of counterparties and automatic settlement of financial derivatives

Abstract

Financial derivatives are widely recognized for their effectiveness in managing interest rate risk, demonstrating the principle of comparative advantage in finance. However, traditional financial derivative transactions are often complex and can expose participants to market and credit risks. To mitigate these risks, reduce transaction costs, and enhance liquidity, this paper proposes a blockchain-based matching mechanism for financial derivatives that uses smart contracts for decentralized counterparty matching and settlement. Smart contracts facilitate secure data sharing among participants, ensuring the integrity and immutability of transaction data. We design a transaction pool mechanism-based smart contracts for counterparty matching and automatic settlement of financial derivatives involving real fiat currencies and introduce an efficient peer-to-peer counterparty matching method, where the entire trading process is conducted on a decentralized blockchain, ensuring greater security and transparency. A prototype implementation based on Ethereum smart contracts validates the effectiveness of our proposed model, demonstrating its potential to streamline and secure financial derivative transactions.