OeNB Freitagsseminar with Raphael Auer and Calin Simon

Project Atlas and the technology of decentralised finance

OeNB Freitagsseminar with Raphael Auer and Calin Simon, Bank for International Settlements Innovation Hub Eurosystem Centre

Decentralized Finance (DeFi) leverages distributed ledger technologies to offer services such as lending, investing, or exchanging cryptoassets without relying on a traditional centralized intermediary. A range of DeFi protocols implements these services as a suite of smart contracts, ie software programs that encode the logic of conventional financial operations. Instead of transacting with a counterparty, DeFi users thus interact with software programs that pool the resources of other DeFi users to maintain control over their funds. This presentation will first present academic work (R Auer, B Haslhofer, S Kitzler, P Saggese and F Victor (2023) “The Technology of Decentralized Finance (DeFi)” BIS Working Paper No. 1066, January) providing a deep dive into the overall architecture, the technical primitives, and the financial functionalities of DeFi protocols. The presentation will then discuss a data platform the BIS innovation hub is currently developing to enhance transparency and provide reliable insights into the macroeconomic relevance of DeFi and cryptoasset markets. Atlas will create an open-source data platform to provide information on market capitalisation, economic activity and international flows of cryptoassets.

Date:
Monday, 17 April 2023, 11:00–12:30 CEST

Venue:
Oesterreichische Nationalbank
Otto-Wagner-Platz 3
1090 Vienna
and online via Webex

Please register by 13 April 2023 at the latest.