On 15-16 December 2025, CREST-Institut Polytechnique de Paris and Grenoble INP jointly hosted the DeFi Workshop 2025 in Grenoble, France.
The workshop brought together researchers working on the economics, infrastructure, and design of blockchain and decentralized finance (DeFi).
The event was supported by the French National Research Agency (ANR) through its grant for the project Blockchain and Decentralized Finance (BLOCKFI).
Day 1: Markets, Incentives, and Protocol Design
The first day featured a series of talks on blockchain microstructure, market design, incentives, and governance. Paolo Guasoni (Dublin City University) analyzed the dynamics of Bitcoin mempool, finding key determinants of fees and waiting times during congestion. Nir Chemaya (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev) introduced Clever Look-ahead Volatility Reduction (CLVR), a transaction ordering rule for AMM-based exchanges, designed to reduce intra-block price volatility and improve execution outcomes.
Several presentations focused on staking and incentives. Fayçal Drissi (University of Oxford) discussed the macroeconomic implications of liquid staking, while Boyang Mu (IP Paris) presented a microeconomic model showing how reputation mechanisms can discipline operators in delegated staking and restaking protocols.
Market performance and mechanism design were explored by Lorenzo Schoenleber (Collegio Carlo Alberto), who provided evidence of systemic frictions in prediction markets. Michele Fabi (IP Paris) studied automated market-making mechanisms for peer-to-peer energy sharing, demonstrating substantial gains over grid-only benchmarks.
Julian Ma (Ethereum Foundation) discussed proposed improvements to Ethereum’s transaction sequencing and inclusion mechanisms (EIP-7805) aimed at improving user experience and limiting transaction reordering manipulation.
The day was concluded by three presentations: Mnacho Echenim (Grenoble INP) presented work on formally verifying optimal trade splitting across concentrated liquidity pools using Isabelle/HOL. Aklis Georgiadis-Harris (University of Warwick) challenged the view of banks as inherently fragile through a mechanism-design framework yielding efficient equilibria without bank runs. Yiyun Zheng (IP Paris) presented her analysis of how airdrop design shapes platform growth and governance.
Day 2: Risk, Scaling; and Network Perspectives
The second day opened with Maarten van Oordt (Vrije University Amsterdam), who examined rational cryptocurrency bubbles driven by expected investment inflows. Following this, Louis Latournerie (IP Paris) presented his mathematical model of the Aave lending protocol, which incorporates liquidation strategies to quantify protocol-level risk.
Roman Kozhan (Warwick Business School) showed that informed liquidity provision on decentralized exchanges, particularly near-current-price activity in low-fee pools, plays a significant role in price discovery. Further insights were provided by Emmanuel Gobet (Sorbonne University), who demonstrated in an optimal stopping model for Uniswap v3 that liquidity providers should optimally concentrate liquidity in a single range.
Daniel Augot (Inria, IP Paris) explained the cryptographic foundations of zero-knowledge proofs to enhance Ethereum’s scalability, highlighting STARK-based proof systems. Yackolley Amoussou-Guenou (Panthéon-Assas University) highlighted persistent censorship risks in Proof-of-Stake systems due to weak validator incentives for enforcing fair transaction ordering.
The workshop concluded with two talks on applying network analysis to assess decentralized ecosystems. Natkamon Tovanich (TU Wien) presented network-based frameworks for uncovering money flows, user behaviors, and economic activities on blockchains. Emphasizing the importance of real-time DeFi monitoring and risk analysis, Julien Prat (IP Paris) demonstrated that network topology plays a crucial role in contagion within the DeFi lending protocol.
The DeFi Workshop 2025 showcased the breadth and depth of current research in blockchain and decentralized ecosystems, fostering cross-disciplinary dialogue and setting the stage for future collaborations across economics, computer science, and cryptography.