Ultimate DeFi & Blockchain Research Base

Here we collect and discuss the best DeFI & Blockchain researches and tools - contributions are welcome.

Feel free to submit a pull request, with anything from small fixes to translations, docs or tools you'd like to add.

Disclaimer: All information (tools, links, articles, text, images, etc.) is provided for educational purposes only! All information is also based on data from public sources. You are solely responsible for your actions, not the author ❗️

Navigation	Instant Link
Security Research Base	Explore
NFT Research Base	Explore
StableCoin Research Base	Explore
General Info	Explore
DeFi Research Base	Explore
Transaction Scoring	Explore
MEV	Explore

| Special Author's Notes:

My Blog on Mirror

| Follow:

Also, here is a study by Arxiv on how to read and parse Arxiv studies & guide to reading academic research papers!

Also x2, here’s a handy checklist for anyone who wants to contribute to Arxiv!

Also, x3, here’s a handy a list of 8 tools to help find, read and analyse research papers!

| Check out:

DeFi Science:

Tip: Use www.arxiv-vanity.com or dangerzone.rocks!

Formal Analysis of Composable DeFi Protocols - In this paper, authors propose a formal process-algebraic technique that models DeFi protocols in a compositional manner to allow for efficient property verification.
Transaction Fee Mechanism Design - Authors explain the behavior of fees in blockchains.
DeFi-ning DeFi: Challenges & Pathway - Good Retrospective into the beginning of decentralized finance.
A theory of Automated Market Makers in DeFi - Authors exploit our theory to formally prove a set of fundamental properties of AMMs, characterizing both structural and economic aspects.
Leveraged Trading on Blockchain Technology - Authors document an ongoing research process towards the implementation and integration of a digital artefact, executing the lifecycle of a leveraged trade with permissionless blockchain.
From banks to DeFi: the evolution of the lending market - Authors discuss the persisting reliance of DeFi lending on the traditional financial system, and conclude with the outlook of the lending market in the IOV era.
Towards Self-Regulating AI - Challenges and Opportunities of AI Model Governance in Financial Services.
On the Just-In-Time Discovery of Profit-Generating Transactions in DeFi Protocols -In this paper, authors investigate two methods that allow them to automatically create profitable DeFi trades.
Maximizing Extractable Value from Automated Market Makers - In this paper authors formally characterize rational miners as players which follow an optimal strategy in the mining game.
The Decentralized Financial Crisis - In this paper authors explore how design weaknesses and price fluctuations in DeFi protocols could lead to a DeFi crisis.
Liquidations: DeFi on a Knife-edge- In order to protect protocols from suffering losses, undercollateralized positions can be liquidated. In this paper, authors present empirical analysis of liquidations on protocols for loanable funds (PLFs).
Measuring Asset Composability as a Proxy for DeFi Integration - Authors seek to understand the degree to which this practice may contribute to financial integration on Ethereum by examining transactions in 'composed' derivatives for the assets DAI, USDC, USDT, ETH and tokenized BTC for the full set of 344.8 million Ethereum transactions computed in 2020.
Dynamic Curves for Decentralized Autonomous Cryptocurrency Exchanges - Authors propose in this work a new approach to constructing the AMM by proposing the idea of dynamic curves.
High-Frequency Trading on Decentralized On-Chain Exchanges - In this work authors formalize, analytically exposit and empirically evaluate an augmented variant of front-running: sandwich attacks, which involve front- and back-running victim TXs.
Flashot - A Snapshot of Flash Loan Attack on DeFi Ecosystem.
DeFiRanger - Detecting Price Manipulation Attacks on DeFi Applications.
Attacking the DeFi Ecosystem with Flash Loans for Fun and Profit - Flash Loans. DeFi. Classic.
SoK: Decentralized Finance (DeFi) - In this Systematization of Knowledge (SoK), authors delineate the DeFi ecosystem along its principal axes. SCSGuard: Deep Scam Detection for Ethereum Smart Contracts
Empirical Evidence from four Governance Token Distributions - This paper provides a framework to quantify decentralization of governance power among blockchain applications.
The Adoption of Blockchain-based Decentralized Exchanges - Authors show that liquidity providers lose token value if exchange rates are volatile due to the order execution mechanism of the blockchain-based exchange.
An analysis of Uniswap markets -One of the best studies on Uniswap DEX activity, authors started researching in 2019 and recently released fresh 2021 analysis.
Finance 4.0: Design principles for a value-sensitive cryptoecnomic system to address sustainability - Authors provide new insights on designing crypto systems.
Behavior of Liquidity Providers in Decentralized Exchanges - Authors aim to understand how liquidity providers react to market information and how they benefit from providing liquidity in DEX.
Cyclic Arbitrage in Decentralized Exchange Markets - Good Read. This paper suggests that with the smart contract technology and the replicated state machine setting of Ethereum, arbitrage strategies are easier implemented in DEXes than in CEX.
SoK: Oracles from the Ground Truth to Market Manipulation - In this SoK, authors systemize the design alternatives for oracles, showcase attacks, and discuss attack mitigation strategies.
Composing Networks of Automated Market Makers - This paper proposes a mathematical model for AMM composition.
Constant Function Market Makers: Multi-Asset Trades via Convex Optimization - A very pedagogical overview of CFMMs and their properties through mathematical modelization from first principles.

Security & Safety:

Demystifying Exploitable Bugs in Smart Contracts - The research indicates that a notable proportion of exploitable bugs in smart contracts are functional bugs, which cannot be detected using simple and general oracles like reentrancy.
The Eye of Horus: Spotting and Analyzing Attacks on Ethereum Smart Contracts -Investigation shows that the number of attacks did not necessarily decrease over the past few years, but for some vulnerabilities remained constant.
A chronological and (hopefully) complete list of reentrancy attacks to date.
Analysis of Bitcoin Vulnerability to Bribery Attacks Launched Through Large Transactions - In this paper, authors design a novel bribery attack and show that this guarantee can be hugely undermined.
Vulnerability of Blockchain Technologies to Quantum Attacks - Here authors analyze the major blockchain-based cryptocurrencies deployed today -- including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin and ZCash, and determine risk exposure to quantum attacks.
BLOCKEYE - Hunting For DeFi Attacks on Blockchain. In this paper, authors proposed BLOCKEYE, a real-time attack detection system for DeFi projects on the Ethereum blockchain.
Topological Anomaly Detection in Dynamic Multilayer Blockchain Networks - Authors introduce a new topological perspective to structural anomaly detection in dynamic multilayer networks.
Ponzi Scheme Detection in Ethereum Transaction Network - Authors discover new ways of detecting Ethereum-based Ponzi schemes.
Verification of the Incremental Merkle Tree Algorithm with Dafny - Authors present our new and original correctness proof of the algorithm along with the Dafny machine-checkable version.
GoHammer Blockchain Performance Test Tool - This tool will help in developing more efficient decentralized systems and will affect decreasing the costs of developing decentralized application projects.
EtherClue: Digital investigation of attacks on Ethereum smart contracts - In this work, authors study the problem of post-factum investigation of Ethereum attacks using Indicators of Compromise specially crafted for use in the blockchain.
Requirement Analyses and Evaluations of Blockchain Platforms per Possible Use Cases - This document provides a generic model of understanding blockchain and its applications.
A Note on Privacy in Constant Function Market Makers - In this note, authors show that privacy is impossible with the usual implementations of CFMMs under most reasonable models of an adversary and provide some mitigating strategies.
A Survey of Security Vulnerabilities in Ethereum Smart Contracts - This paper explains eight vulnerabilities that are specific to the application level of BT by analyzing the exploitation case scenarios of these vulnerabilities.
Low-cost attacks on Ethereum 2.0 by sub-1/3 stakeholders - Authors outline two dishonest strategies that can be cheaply executed on the Ethereum 2.0 beacon chain, even by validators holding less than one-third of the total stake: malicious chain reorganizations ("reorgs") and finality delays.
An approach to detect Denial of Service Vulnerability in Ethereum Smart Contracts - In this paper, authors propose a framework that combines static and dynamic analysis to detect DoS due to an unexpected revert in ETH Smart Contracts.
AGSolT: a Tool for Automated Test-Case Generation for Solidity Smart Contracts - Authors found that AGSolT is capable of achieving high branch overage with both approaches and even discovered some errors in some of the most popular Solidity smart contracts on Github.
Temporal-Amount Snapshot MultiGraph for Ethereum Transaction Tracking - Authors propose TASMG to model Ethereum transaction records as a temporal-amount network and then present TAW to effectively embed accounts via their transaction records, which integrates temporal and amount information of the proposed network.
Smart Contract Vulnerability Detection: From Pure Neural Network to Interpretable Graph Feature and Expert Pattern Fusion - Understanding smart contracts scan tools.
Ethereum Name Service: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly - Yet, no existing work has studied this emerging system, the security issues and misbehaviors in ENS. Authors present the first study of ENS by analyzing millions of event logs related to ENS.
The Anatomy of a Cryptocurrency Pump-and-Dump Scheme - This paper represents the first detailed empirical query of pump-and-dump activities in cryptocurrency markets.
Distinguishing manipulated stocks via trading network analysis - These findings may help to detect manipulated stocks. Distinguishing manipulated stocks via trading network analysis.
From Innovations to Prospects: What Is Hidden Behind Cryptocurrencies? - In this paper, an empirical study on existing altcoins is carried out to offer a thorough understanding of various aspects associated with altcoin innovations.
[Demystifying Cryptocurrency Mining Attacks: A Semi-supervised