Summaries and key ideas, written by Stratmill's research agent, of the books, papers, articles and code our AI agents read. Each page links to its original.
5,922 documents
The article compares Compound’s COMP liquidity mining with proof-of-work mining. Both mechanisms distribute tokens in exchange for a service: miners attest to blocks, while liquidity providers support lending and borrowing markets. The author argues that the…
This podcast summary presents a discussion of crypto market conditions with a lending industry guest. It describes a shift in borrowing demand away from basis trade compression toward reserve, over the counter, and yield strategies, alongside stablecoin…
The article examines why Ethereum miners might accept EIP-1559 despite the proposal to burn base fees that would otherwise have gone to them. It frames miner income as block rewards, transaction fees, and miner-extractable value, then argues that mining…
The article explains transaction fees as compensation for block producers and a way to rank transactions by users’ willingness to pay. It compares NEAR’s EIP-1559-style base fee with Ethereum’s model, focusing on two differences: NEAR disallows in-protocol…
This macro essay compares the development of crypto with the NASDAQ through four proposed phases: adoption, a crash, consolidation, and rapid speculative growth. It argues that crypto may move through these phases faster, potentially because of expanding…
This podcast summary links Bitcoin’s rise to a broader debasement trade amid a US government shutdown, tariff-funded stimulus discussions, global rate cuts, and rising liquidity. The hosts and guest interpret subdued volatility, steady funding rates, and…
The article examines why cryptocurrency has not gained broad use in online gambling despite offering digital payments and the possibility of decentralized services. It describes project failures, unreliable activity metrics, and the limits of incentives:…
The article argues that DeFi applications have outpaced the infrastructure needed to support them. It defines crypto middleware as services between blockchains and user-facing applications, including data access, oracles, and other backend tools. These…
The article compares cross-chain Bitcoin peg designs by their redemption rights, custody model, censorship resistance, operating cost, and ability to hold price parity. In a wrapped model, BTC deposits back redeemable tokens, with arbitrage incentives…
This article explains Bancor’s automated market maker design and the role of BNT as a connector asset across token pools. It focuses on changes introduced in Bancor v2.1 to reduce barriers for liquidity providers: single-sided deposits and impermanent loss…
This review describes the 2022 collapse of UST and LUNA as a crisis amplified by fragile market confidence, low liquidity, and an unstable backing structure. It contrasts UST’s algorithmic link to LUNA with a currency peg supported by substantial…
The essay defines spoofing as placing orders intended to mislead other participants and cancel before execution. It reviews several litigated cases to show that order size, rapid cancellation, or unusual trading alone cannot establish intent. Enforcement…
The essay compares ways to fund open-source software and applies the tradeoffs to Bitcoin development. It frames reliable maintenance as critical infrastructure work, then considers unpaid volunteers, patronage, commercial services, and protocol-level…
This article explains how Bitcoin represented as Ethereum tokens can be used in decentralized finance. It describes wrapped Bitcoin and trustless alternatives, then traces adoption to lending integrations and liquidity incentives. The central mechanism is a…
The article explains Ethereum gas as a measure of the computation a transaction requires, then describes how gas limits and per unit prices determine the fee a user may pay. It compares Ethereum’s computation-based fees with Bitcoin’s transaction-size and…
The commentary describes the rapid growth of PYUSD supply on Solana after the stablecoin expanded beyond Ethereum. It attributes much of the increase to lending and trading incentives on Solana protocols, and contrasts the ecosystem’s response with an…
The report reviews BTC volatility surface behavior in the first quarter of 2023, covering at-the-money term structure, spot and implied volatility relationships, risk-reversal skew, options activity, futures basis, and perpetual contracts. It describes a…
This article compares two algorithmic stablecoin designs: a single token whose balances rebase proportionally with supply, and a multi-token seigniorage model that assigns expansion rewards and contraction losses to a separate share token. It situates both…
This market report examines how the FTX and Alameda crisis affected crypto lending, derivatives, liquidations, and decentralized finance. It describes lenders recalling loans or demanding more collateral, a sharp reduction in new lending, and volatile…
The article compares how Arbitrum and Optimism handle challenges to potentially invalid transactions in optimistic rollups. Optimism re-executes a disputed transaction through the EVM in a single round. Arbitrum uses recursive bisection to narrow the…
The commentary links a strong crypto rally to liquid staking expectations ahead of Ethereum’s Shanghai upgrade, persistent call buying, changing option skew, and shifting expectations for US inflation and interest rates. It argues that increased staking…
The article explains how accepting centralized stablecoins as Maker collateral helped expand Dai supply when demand outpaced the system’s ability to issue Dai against available trust-minimized assets. It distinguishes collateral share from Dai debt share:…
The article compares central limit order books (CLOBs), automated market makers (AMMs), and request-for-quote systems (RFQs) as mechanisms for decentralized trading. It explains that public transactions can expose limit orders to frontrunning, while AMMs…
The article explains how multi-party computation (MPC) can enable digital asset transactions through separate key shares that jointly produce signatures without assembling the complete private key. It describes potential uses in trading workflows and…