2023-11-08
69 minutes

Ava Labs x CBER Ep 2: Governance of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations

About this episode

Brett Falk (University of Pennsylvania) and Gerry Tsoukalas (Boston University) discuss voting protocols in Decentralized Autonomous Organizations. Brett Falk (University of Pennsylvania) and Gerry Tsoukalas (Boston University) highlight weaknesses in existing voting protocols. An important point is that many voting protocols weight votes based on token holdings but a voter’s token holdings does not, in general, reflect the level of information that the voter has with regard to a voting proposal. The consequence of this misalignment between a voter’s weight and a voter’s information is suboptimal welfare outcomes.

Paper: Token-Weighted Crowdsourcing and Balancing Power in Decentralized Governance

Guests

Brett Falk

Brett Falk

Research professor, computer and information sciences, at the University of Pennsylvania.

Gerry Tsoukalas

Gerry Tsoukalas

Associate Professor, Boston University.

Andreas Park

Andreas Park

Professor of Finance, University of Toronto.

Fahad Saleh

Fahad Saleh

Associate Professor of Finance and the Nunnenkamp-Cinelli Faculty Fellow at Wake Forest University.

About our guest

Brett Falk is a Professor in Computer and Information Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the director of the Crypto and Society Lab, which focuses on 1) privacy and security in digital environments, 2) facilitating transparency and trust. He has published extensively in the field of cryptography, coding theory and network analysis. Professor Falk also teaches a highly popular course on Blockchain technology for Penn’s Master’s in Computing and Information Technology program. He received his Sc.B. in mathematics from Brown University, and his Ph.D. in mathematics from UCLA.

Gerry Tsoukalas is a Professor in the Information Systems department at Boston University, Questrom School of Business, a Senior Fellow of the Wharton School, Visiting Professor at IMD Switzerland, and a research fellow of Cornell University’s FinTech Initiative. He specializes in digital platforms and analytics. His scholarly work is widely published and has received numerous research awards. He holds Associate Editor positions at Management Science and M&SOM, and serves as a Guest Editor for the Journal of Operations Management. With over a decade of teaching experience, he has led undergraduate, MBA, and executive MBA courses in Business and Data Analytics (machine learning) at Boston University, Wharton, and Columbia Business School, receiving awards for teaching excellence.

AVALABS x CBER

Owl Explains by Ava Labs and the Crypto and Blockchain Economic Research (CBER) Forum are proud to announce the Crafting the Crypto Economy podcast series. Episodes feature deep dives into notable research subjects such as lending platform economics, DEX design, DAO governance, and much more. By highlighting major research efforts, the series aims to unveil useful learning, explain complex topics, and educate a wide range of listeners, from beginners to professionals. Most of all, the podcast will equip lawmakers and regulators with the additional tools and knowledge they need to effectively and sensibly shape workable blockchain policies that maximally benefit all parties.

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Ava Labs x CBER Ep 4: Economics of Lending Platforms

This episode discusses lending platforms on blockchains. Thomas Rivera (McGill University) and Quentin Vandeweyer (University of Chicago) explain that lending platforms generate sub-optimal welfare due to under-utilization of funds that are lent to the platform. To provide more context, lending platforms are specified in such a way that the level of borrowing (relative to lending) necessarily fluctuates with market conditions, resulting in instances where borrowing is significantly below lending. Importantly, when borrowing is significantly below lending, the total interest accrued from borrowers (relative to lending volume) is necessarily low, yielding low interest rates for lenders and thereby discouraging lending. Potential improvements for lending platforms are discussed. Paper: Equilibrium in a DeFi Lending Market