Follow blockchain research across journals, conferences, and preprint repositories.
9,941 results · page 28 of 415
D. Susana, V. Srividya, S. Abirami
No abstract is available for this record.
Aldo Álvarez-Risco, Shyla Del-Aguila-Arcentales
No abstract is available for this record.
Krrish Dubey, P. Mukherjee, Sayan Chakraborty, Sitanath Biswas · 6 authors
No abstract is available for this record.
Pasquale De Rosa
No abstract is available for this record.
Andreas Park
Smart contracts implement financial logic on public blockchains, and external code audits are a primary means of providing assurance about their security. This paper discusses Landsman, Lyandres, Maydew, Rabetti, and Zhang (Journal of Accounting and Economics, forthcoming), who describe and analyze the market for smart contract audits. I provide a brief primer on blockchains and smart contracts, explain what distinguishes blockchainbased finance from traditional finance, outline why no audit can guarantee security in an open, permissionless environment, and discuss how Landsman et al.s findings relate to financial auditing. A central result in their paper is that pre-launch audits do not predict fewer breaches, which is noteworthy and consistent with the view that a smart contract audit, like a financial audit, is a snapshot, not a shield. Beyond the conceptual and methodological parallels between smart contract and financial audits, two distinctive features merit the attention of accounting scholars: open code forking, which creates networks of common-code exposure and correlated systemic risk, and bug bounty programs, which provide a crowdsourced and potentially continuous form of assurance.
N F N N A Rahman, Ruzian Markom, Hizri Hasshan
The rapid expansion of decentralised finance (DeFi) has elevated digital assets, particularly Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), to a prominent position within contemporary financial markets. NFTs are blockchain-based digital tokens enabled by smart contracts that facilitate verifiable ownership and authentication in decentralised environments. Despite growing international efforts to regulate NFT markets, clear legal frameworks—especially those addressing Shariah-compliant NFTs—remain underdeveloped. In Malaysia, the Islamic Financial Services Act 2013 (IFSA) and the Securities Commission Malaysia’s Digital Assets Guidelines provide only limited guidance on the classification, ownership, and enforceability of NFT-based financial products. This article examines the development of NFTs, analyses the existing Malaysian legal framework, and evaluates the readiness of Malaysia’s regulatory architecture to accommodate Shariah-compliant NFTs. Adopting a doctrinal methodology supported by case analysis, the study explores the applicability of current laws to NFT transactions and undertakes a comparative assessment of regulatory developments in the United Arab Emirates. The absence of explicit regulatory provisions raises significant Shariah compliance concerns, particularly in relation to gharar (uncertainty), riba (usury), and the recognition of māl (legitimate ownership), which may impede Malaysia’s aspiration to emerge as an Islamic DeFi hub. This study finds that Malaysia’s existing legal framework lacks specific Shariah compliance mechanisms for the legal recognition and governance of NFTs. Accordingly, targeted regulatory reforms are necessary to address the legal and Shariah complexities associated with NFTs and to facilitate responsible digital innovation within Malaysia’s Islamic DeFi ecosystem.
Yuan Chang, Yinbin Miao, Tom H. Luan, Jinkai Zheng · 5 authors
The need for enhanced transaction privacy in decentralized finance (DeFi) is critical. However, existing coin mixing solutions often reveal telltale patterns on the blockchain, exposing users to heuristic analysis. This paper presents DeFiMix, an indistinguishable coin mixing scheme engineered to obscure transaction flows while guaranteeing fairness and security. DeFiMix achieves this through a dual-layer mechanism. First, an off-chain secret handshake protocol enables anonymous negotiation between senders and mixers, effectively breaking the link between transactions and participants. Second, on-chain transactions are structured using time-locks and concurrent signatures to resemble common DeFi activities such as staking and lending, rendering them indistinguishable from ordinary operations. Using security analysis and extensive simulations, we validate DeFiMix’s ability to prevent transaction linkage while remaining practically viable. The results underscore DeFiMix’s strong indistinguishability and fairness, alongside its minimal computational demands, establishing it as a compelling solution for privacy-focused transactions within the DeFi ecosystem.
William N. Goetzmann, Dong Huang, Milad Nozari
NFTs provided an extraordinary real-time laboratory for bubble economics: returns were exceptionally right-skewed, illiquidity pervaded even the most active platforms, and a handful of trades drove aggregate performance. Investors extrapolating from realized returns without recognizing selection bias and survivorship faced a substantial risk of disappointment. As our data and simulations confirm, successful NFT investing during the bubble required an almost perfect confluence of timing, liquidity, and luck. Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org .
Eric F. Buddensiek, Paul P. Momtaz
We identify a core microfoundation of digital entrepreneurial ecosystems (EE): social learning in the form of information cascades. Using decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) as a laboratory where micro-level coordination processes are directly observable on blockchains, we trace how individual-level voting behavior aggregates into ecosystem-level outcomes. Exploring hand-collected data covering 19,450,710 votes from 924,095 unique voters in 3,317 DAO governance proposals, we estimate economically strong information cascades that run from influential through early to late voters. Several contextual factors impede social learning in DAOs, including the presence of cybercriminals in the DAO community and market sentiment, while the decentralization of token ownership is an important prerequisite for information cascades to unfold. Finally, we document a link between the potency of information cascades and the financial performance of DAOs. Stronger information cascades are associated with higher market capitalization, trading volume, and abnormal cryptocurrency token returns. Overall, we contribute to the EE literature by demonstrating how observable micro-level learning processes triggered by influential agents in the network scale into ecosystem-level financial performance.
Adhishthatri Singh, Chinmoy Ghosh, Shrayasi Datta
No abstract is available for this record.
Adaobi Ndukaji
Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) represent a novel organizational form enabled by blockchain technology, characterized by decentralized governance, token-based incentives, and automated execution via smart contracts. This paper conceptualizes DAOs as entrepreneurial firms, examining their governance structures, incentive mechanisms, and failure dynamics. Drawing on emerging empirical studies and organizational theory, the paper argues that while DAOs reduce traditional agency costs and enhance transparency, they introduce new coordination challenges, participation inefficiencies, and systemic vulnerabilities. The analysis reveals that governance concentration, misaligned incentives, and low participation rates contribute significantly to DAO failure rates. The paper proposes a hybrid governance framework integrating decentralized mechanisms with adaptive institutional controls to improve DAO sustainability. This study contributes to entrepreneurship literature by positioning DAOs as a new frontier in digital firm formation and entrepreneurial finance.
Alexander Usvitskiy, Vitaliy Mizyakov
This paper investigates how blockchain consensus mechanisms and market mechanisms of liquidity provision affect price bubble formation in cryptocurrency markets. Specifically, we compare Proof-of-Work (PoW) and Proof-of-Stake (PoS) under two trading environments: a Limit Order Market (LOM) and an Automated Market Maker (AMM). We conduct a controlled laboratory experiment following a 2×2 between-subject design, generating four treatments: PoW-LOM, PoW-AMM, PoS-LOM, and PoS-AMM. Market outcomes are evaluated using standard bubble measures, including RD, RAD, RDMAX, AMPLITUDE, and CRASH. The results show that AMM-based markets exhibit weaker bubble dynamics than LOM-based markets, with lower mispricing, smaller peak overvaluation, and less severe crashes. By contrast, the results do not support the hypothesis that bubble formation is lower under PoS than under PoW. Instead, in the experimental setting, PoS treatments display stronger bubble patterns than PoW treatments. Overall, our results show that the institutional design of cryptocurrency markets plays an important role in shaping speculative price dynamics and market stability.
Iaros Belkin, Belkin Marketing
No abstract is available for this record.
Micky Lagvankar
No abstract is available for this record.
Abir Rebei, Diego Valdeolmillos-Villaverde, Mario González Morán
No abstract is available for this record.
Daniel Liebau, Melody Ma
Blockchain oracles combine, within a single arrangement, activities that traditional finance assigns to distinct and in part regulated entities. We develop a four-stage oracle data lifecycle framework, covering sourcing, collection and reporting, aggregation, and delivery and consumption, and compare each stage with its counterpart in traditional wholesale data markets. In traditional markets, safeguards attach at the regulated start and end points of that lifecycle, and liability for mispricing rests on identifiable contractual parties. In DeFi, no regulated end-point exists: smart contracts execute on oracle prices automatically and irreversibly, and end-users bear mispricing risk without redress. Distinguishing control-based from supply-based regulatory hooks, we classify oracles as suppliers to DeFi arrangements. Because the risks accompanying the same activities differ, transplanting benchmark regulation would be disproportionate. We identify three paths forward: DeFi literacy, public-permissioned oracle networks, and regulated benchmark administrators publishing on-chain.
Lyana S. Unatlokova, Tatyana A. Kiyashchenko
This article examines decentralized finance as an institutional and technological alternative to traditional financial intermediation in the Russian Federation. The economic nature of protocol-based liquidity redistribution, the role of smart contracts, tokenization, and digital financial assets are explored. It is demonstrated that decentralized instruments can reduce transaction costs, expand access to capital, and create new investment channels. However, they are accompanied by technological, legal, fiscal, and systemic risks that require balanced government regulation.
Paul P. Momtaz
Decentralized finance (DeFi) has emerged as a significant financial innovation, using blockchain technology and smart contracts to replicate and expand traditional financial services without intermediaries. This review synthesizes the literature across seven dimensions: token financing, trading and liquidity, cryptocurrency as an asset class, governance, risk, monetary system implications, and infrastructure. We identify several key findings: tokens solve coordination problems but face design trade-offs; cryptocurrency markets exhibit distinct risk factors, yet most price volatility reflects beliefs rather than fundamentals; decentralization is partial and endogenous, with concentration emerging in mining, staking, and governance; novel risks including stablecoin fragility and MEV extraction require new frameworks; and infrastructure constraints shape feasible applications. We conclude by proposing directions for future research.
Olivier Rikken, Marijn Janssen, Zenlin Kwee
No abstract is available for this record.
Paula Ungureanu, Francesca Bellesia, Carlotta Cochis
No abstract is available for this record.
Tiago Ferreira Cavazin
O estudo analisa o cenário de investimento no ecossistema de startups Web3 entre os anos de 2024 e 2025, identificando um processo de maturação e consolidação setorial. Observa-se a transição de um modelo de financiamento especulativo para uma abordagem estratégica, com foco em infraestrutura crítica e modelos de negócio sustentáveis. Embora os dados apontem uma redução quantitativa no volume de transações — exemplificada pela queda de 34% no primeiro trimestre de 2025 em comparação ao período anterior —, constata-se um aumento no valor médio por investimento. Conclui-se que o mercado atravessa uma fase de ajuste pós-volatilidade, na qual a sofisticação dos investidores prioriza a robustez tecnológica e a viabilidade comercial de longo prazo em detrimento do volume de operações.<br>
Xiang Chen, Kan Lu, Alpamis Kutlimuratov
Inderscience is a global company, a dynamic leading independent journal publisher disseminates the latest research across the broad fields of science, engineering and technology; management, public and business administration; environment, ecological economics and sustainable development; computing, ICT and internet/web services, and related areas.
Steven L. Schwarcz, Jack Tiedemann
Decentralized finance (DeFi) promises cheaper, faster and more accessible financial services by replacing traditional regulated intermediaries with software protocols and smart contracts. But removing those intermediaries also removes the practical chokepoints for implementing modern financial regulation: customer identification and screening, disclosure, recordkeeping, operational safeguards and incident reporting. This paper argues that the core compliance challenge in DeFi is therefore a governance problem: regulators should focus less on DeFi’s underlying computer code and more on the control points where compliance duties could realistically be assigned, supervised and enforced. Identifying those control points could be challenging, however, because DeFi responsibilities are dispersed across software developers, governance structures, parties that interface with investors and third-party service providers. To address that challenge, the paper proposes a layered regulatory strategy comprising four complementary approaches: identifying and regulating gateway intermediaries that facilitate access to DeFi services; prescribing the compliance obligations those intermediaries should assume; establishing targeted governance standards for smart contracts and the oracle and data inputs on which they depend; and applying shadow-banking-type safeguards to constrain spillover channels between DeFi and the traditional financial system. No single approach would be sufficient on its own; their combined effect would reconstruct, at workable control points, the most critical accountability and oversight functions that DeFi displaces. Properly designed and implemented, this strategy could help to preserve DeFi’s efficiency benefits while cost-effectively restoring regulatory protection and accountability.
Swaminathan Balasubramaniam
No abstract is available for this record.