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CryptoEconLab

Welcome to the CryptoEconLab public repository. Here you will be able to learn about and contribute to our Open Problems, RFPs, and Research Projects, as well as keep tabs on what we're planning for the future. You can learn more about our lab in our website and the Protocol Labs Research webpage. You can also follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn to keep taps on relevant discussions and information.

CryptoEconLab

Mission & Vision 💭

Cryptoeconomics is an emerging field of incentive and mechanism design in cryptographically secured peer-to-peer networks. This multidisciplinary endeavor is at the core of every Web3 project, pulling in knowledge from computer science, network science, statistics, economics, and systems engineering.

CryptoEconLab is Protocol Lab's hub for research on economic incentives, coordination game theory, and novel marketplaces. We aim to develop capacity to design, validate, deploy, and govern large-scale economic systems. CryptoEconLab strives to empower projects in the ecosystem through novel incentives and advance humanity’s understanding of multiagent systems and algorithmic steering of economic networks.

We are applying our learnings to grow and maintain the Filecoin ecosystem, where we are active drivers and participants. Filecoin is a layer1 blockchain that orchestrates a decentralized data storage network designed to store humanity’s most important information - and Filecoin’s unique cryptoeconomic system is central to its design.

Research 📚

CryptoEconLab’s current focus areas are:

Incentive & token design
Optimal pricing and resource allocation in distributed networks
Real-world experience & business impact
Network analytics & data-driven monitoring
Formation, diffusion, and learning in networks
Modeling & simulation
Value attribution and graph-based algorithms
Evolutionary game theory, population games, state-based potential games
Prediction markets, automated market makers, reputation systems
Governance process & principles

Open Problems

We welcome discussion of our current Open Problems on our GitHub discussion page. Please join us in exploring the future of cryptoeconomics by contributing to the solution of current problems and posing new ones!

The open problems' folder include research questions that can be used to develop an M.Sc. thesis or a Ph.D. industry-experience project for students in computer science, statistics, data science, complexity, economics or related areas. These questions can also serve as the basis for independent postdoctoral research.

These project ideas can be discussed on the CryptoEconLab Discussion Board; inquiries about opportunities for grant-supported research can be directed to research-grants@protocol.ai.

Research Grants

Protocol Labs has a grant program targeted at supporting research within the scope and mission of the company. It includes topic-specific proposals (the Requests for Proposals or RFPs) and open research awards (which are intended to support researchers pursuing topics of interest to Protocol Labs).

The full details and application process can be found in the dedicated GitHub repo. We encourage the community to read the currently open RPFs and to apply with topics related to our lab's research scope.

Our work

This repository also includes code and analysis our lab has been working on. In the tools folder, you will find the open source tools we built. The folder analysis contains Jupyter notebooks and other auxiliary code that reproduces analysis and research developed by our lab.

Collaborations

We are very interested in forming collaborations with researchers and engineers working in our fields of interest, and we offer several grants and research fellowships to support these working relationships. Please check out the PL Research website for further details and application instructions.

Work Request :hammer_and_wrench:

How to make a Request

We maintain a transparent work-request process using Github Issues to best serve our customers and stakeholders. To create a request, please fill out the appropriate Work Request Issue template.

SLA / What to expect from CEL

Resulting modeling, analysis, or review work can range from very high-level and expedient to very sophisticated and labor-intensive, depending on the requirements, so we use the following service level agreement (SLA) to set expectations for timelines and level of effort when an issue or request is generated for CryptoEconLab:

CEL will review each submitted Github Issue within a maximum of 2 weeks and assess whether we have capacity and ability to engage. If so, we will respond in the comments with the following information:

The issue should contain all of the information requested in the form.
Questions or clarifications on the submitted request
Possible paths forward, which may contain different levels of support depending on staff availability and priority
We will then work with the requestor to develop an appropriate work plan and communication plan that is mutually agreeable. At a minimum, this would be commenting on outcomes in the Github issue; but could also expand to include modeling or analysis workstreams and/or discussions, documents, reports, or meetings.

In general, we will work to support the following timelines after a request has completed the above steps (submission and scope agreement):

2 weeks for initial review of FIPs or FIP discussions
2 weeks to interpret new questions about existing CryptoEconLab models and analysis
2+ weeks to scope and plan for new CryptoEconLab models and analysis (this does not include the actual modeling and analysis, which cannot be estimated before understanding all the previous steps for a given request)

If questions or clarifications about the original request take more time to resolve, all subsequent time frames would extend by this amount.

Contact 📞

Main website: cryptoeconlab.io
Twitter: @cryptoeconlab
LinkedIn: cryptoeconlab
Filecoin Slack Channel: #cryptoeconomics