I-Corps: Technical Framework for Testing, Simulating, and Designing Stable Assets

这个I-Corps项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力是增强设计稳定资产和货币的能力，特别是在加密货币“稳定币”领域。该项目开发测试和设计技术，允许采用科学方法设计新的稳定币，并为分散金融代理提供工具，以便对风险和投资做出明智的决策。两者都有助于增强稳定币的长期稳定性，这可以为强大的去中心化金融体系奠定基础，并促进加密货币的经济采用。测试和设计技术可以被稳定币公司和这些市场的投资者（如对冲基金）使用。对于前者，该技术对于执行验证和做出明智的设计选择是有用的。在后者中，该技术可用于提供交易和价值指标，并衡量不同头寸的风险。I-Corps项目开发了一个框架，用于理解稳定资产，提供分散金融领域所缺少的测试、模拟和设计能力。这需要新的金融模型，涉及多周期系统中匿名代理之间的各种算法合约，需要在没有中央银行的情况下重复操作。除了这些解释实际稳定币运动的模型之外，没有现有的模型适用于这种设置。该框架涉及基于这些模型的大量市场设计。市场设计是经济学和计算机科学交叉的一个新领域；它研究的是如何设计市场才能运转良好。稳定币协议的复杂性为研究提供了重要的计算机科学组成部分。这些模型使市场模拟和理解来自不同协议设计的市场动态，从而可以更好地学习如何设计更好的稳定币。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is enhanced ability to design stable assets and currencies, particularly in the cryptocurrency `stablecoin' space. This project develops testing and design technology that allows a scientific approach to designing new stablecoins and provides tools for agents in decentralized finance to make informed decisions about risk and investment. Both serve to enhance the long-term stability of stablecoins, which could form the basis for a robust decentralized financial system and facilitate economic adoption of cryptocurrencies. The testing and design technology can be used by stablecoin companies and investors in these markets (such as hedge funds). For the former, the technology is useful to perform validation and to make informed design choices. In the latter, the technology can be used to provide trading and value indicators and to measure the risks in different positions.This I-Corps project develops a framework for understanding stable assets that provides the testing, simulation, and design capabilities missing in the decentralized finance space. This requires new financial models involving various algorithmic contracts between anonymous agents in a multi-period system that requires recurring actions without a central bank. Aside from these models, which explain actual stablecoin movements, no existing models apply to this setting. This framework involves substantial market design based on these models. Market design is a new field at the intersection of economics and computer science; it studies how markets can be designed to work well. The complexity of stablecoin protocols presents a substantial computer science component to the research. The models enable market simulation and understanding of market dynamics arising from different protocol design, which allows improved learning in how to design better stablecoins.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.