1. “GHO A flexible, decentralized stablecoin” by Emilio Frangella and Steven Valeri

TLDR:

• Mechanism design in the field of stablecoins continues to be a major topic amongst researchers, especially in the aftermath of UST’s collapse.

• The issues associated with the design of stablecoins have been formulated as a trilemma, whereby stablecoins can, at most, have two of the following three properties: Capital Efficiency, Decentralization, and Price Stability.

• This paper discusses a new stablecoin design called GHO, which attempts to provide optimal trade-offs via a combination of dynamic supply, over-collateralization and so-called facilitators.

2. “Reap the Harvest on Blockchain: A Survey of Yield Farming Protocols” by Jiahua Xu and Yebo Feng

TLDR:

• “Yield-Farming” has become one of the most prevalent strategies implemented by DeFi projects to attract users. Its core tenet is rather simple: the users of a protocol are rewarded with that protocol’s native token for providing liquidity and services.

• However, as a cryptoeconomic mechanism, little is known about the effectiveness of yield farming, or even the nature of the users engaged in this activity.

• This paper attempts to shed light on how Yield Farming is implemented across a plethora of protocols and the role of yield aggregators such as Yearn and BadgerDAO.

3. “Notebook: A Zero-Knowledge Identity Infrastructure Layer” by Nathaniel Masfen-Yan, Solal Afota, Dhruv Mangtani, and Sacha Arroues-Paykin

TLDR:

• Many crypto-native User Identity and Authentication systems have been proposed over the years, but the pseudonymous nature of blockchain addresses poses considerable privacy issues that have prevented such services from proliferating.

• Recently, products such as the Ethereum Name Service and Metamask’s User Authenticator have considerably improved the user experience of on-chain authenticators, but the privacy issue remains.

• This paper introduces an interesting new schema called Notebook which uses Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs) to implement user authentication in a semi-private and, importantly, highly-efficient manner.

4. “Optimal Incentive Mechanisms for Fair and Equitable Rewards in PoS Blockchains” by Hadi Sahin, Kemal Akkaya, and Sukumar Ganapati

TLDR:

• The design of Proof-of-Stake (PoS) reward mechanisms is an active research area in the industry and one that has attained substantial levels of interest after The Merge; Ethereum’s transition to PoS.

• In reality, PoS is an umbrella term used to classify protocols that implement Sybil protection through financial operations, such as the locking up, or staking, of funds.

• This paper provides interesting background on the different flavors of PoS and especially focuses on how the reward mechanisms employed by these protocols impact wealth distribution in their respective blockchains.

5. “When is Spring coming? A Security Analysis of Avalanche Consensus” by Ignacio Amores-Sesar, Christian Cachin, and Enrico Tedeschi

TLDR:

• The Avalanche consensus protocol continues to garnish interest by researchers and investors alike, as evidenced by AVAX’s high market capitalization.

• However, much remains to be formalized about the inner workings of Avalanche and its intrinsic properties as a consensus mechanism.

• This paper is the first attempt at providing an abstract specification of the Avalanche protocol and a matching formal analysis through pseudo-code.

• The author’s analysis reviews a relatively serious vulnerability that affects the liveness of the protocol and potential remediation techniques are discussed.

Research collected and curated by @cipherix.

This newsletter is for informational purposes only and is not intended as legal, business, investment, or tax advice.

The Smart Contract Research Forum’s (SCRF) bold mission is to advance web3 through actionable research and knowledge-sharing. To this end, SCRF connects researchers and builders, sponsors projects, and constructs collaborative forums. SCRF’s community is an active, international network of academics, industry architects, and blockchain advocates.

1. “GHO A flexible, decentralized stablecoin” by Emilio Frangella and Steven Valeri

TLDR:

• Mechanism design in the field of stablecoins continues to be a major topic amongst researchers, especially in the aftermath of UST’s collapse.

• The issues associated with the design of stablecoins have been formulated as a trilemma, whereby stablecoins can, at most, have two of the following three properties: Capital Efficiency, Decentralization, and Price Stability.

• This paper discusses a new stablecoin design called GHO, which attempts to provide optimal trade-offs via a combination of dynamic supply, over-collateralization and so-called facilitators.

2. “Reap the Harvest on Blockchain: A Survey of Yield Farming Protocols” by Jiahua Xu and Yebo Feng

TLDR:

• “Yield-Farming” has become one of the most prevalent strategies implemented by DeFi projects to attract users. Its core tenet is rather simple: the users of a protocol are rewarded with that protocol’s native token for providing liquidity and services.

• However, as a cryptoeconomic mechanism, little is known about the effectiveness of yield farming, or even the nature of the users engaged in this activity.

• This paper attempts to shed light on how Yield Farming is implemented across a plethora of protocols and the role of yield aggregators such as Yearn and BadgerDAO.

3. “Notebook: A Zero-Knowledge Identity Infrastructure Layer” by Nathaniel Masfen-Yan, Solal Afota, Dhruv Mangtani, and Sacha Arroues-Paykin

TLDR:

• Many crypto-native User Identity and Authentication systems have been proposed over the years, but the pseudonymous nature of blockchain addresses poses considerable privacy issues that have prevented such services from proliferating.

• Recently, products such as the Ethereum Name Service and Metamask’s User Authenticator have considerably improved the user experience of on-chain authenticators, but the privacy issue remains.

• This paper introduces an interesting new schema called Notebook which uses Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs) to implement user authentication in a semi-private and, importantly, highly-efficient manner.

4. “Optimal Incentive Mechanisms for Fair and Equitable Rewards in PoS Blockchains” by Hadi Sahin, Kemal Akkaya, and Sukumar Ganapati

TLDR:

• The design of Proof-of-Stake (PoS) reward mechanisms is an active research area in the industry and one that has attained substantial levels of interest after The Merge; Ethereum’s transition to PoS.

• In reality, PoS is an umbrella term used to classify protocols that implement Sybil protection through financial operations, such as the locking up, or staking, of funds.

• This paper provides interesting background on the different flavors of PoS and especially focuses on how the reward mechanisms employed by these protocols impact wealth distribution in their respective blockchains.

5. “When is Spring coming? A Security Analysis of Avalanche Consensus” by Ignacio Amores-Sesar, Christian Cachin, and Enrico Tedeschi

TLDR:

• The Avalanche consensus protocol continues to garnish interest by researchers and investors alike, as evidenced by AVAX’s high market capitalization.

• However, much remains to be formalized about the inner workings of Avalanche and its intrinsic properties as a consensus mechanism.

• This paper is the first attempt at providing an abstract specification of the Avalanche protocol and a matching formal analysis through pseudo-code.

• The author’s analysis reviews a relatively serious vulnerability that affects the liveness of the protocol and potential remediation techniques are discussed.

Research collected and curated by @cipherix.

This newsletter is for informational purposes only and is not intended as legal, business, investment, or tax advice.

The Smart Contract Research Forum’s (SCRF) bold mission is to advance web3 through actionable research and knowledge-sharing. To this end, SCRF connects researchers and builders, sponsors projects, and constructs collaborative forums. SCRF’s community is an active, international network of academics, industry architects, and blockchain advocates.