Designing, analyzing, and researching DeFi protocols
Designing DeFi brings together researchers, engineers, and practitioners working on incentives, economic mechanisms, market design, and protocol-level innovation.
The goal is to understand how DeFi systems behave in adversarial and strategic environments, and how better design can improve outcomes at scale.
Our Team
Bita Abolfathi
Operator and research-program builder focused on advancing DeFi market structure, protocol growth, and applied research. She has helped lead research and ecosystem grant programs across the Uniswap Foundation and Uniswap Labs, working with researchers, builders, and protocol teams. Previously, Bita served as Chief of Staff at Gauntlet.
Ciamac Moallemi
Professor of Business at Columbia Business School and Director of the Briger Family Digital Finance Lab. His research spans quantitative finance, market microstructure, stochastic control, and decentralized finance. He serves as a Research Advisor at Paradigm and Uniswap Labs. Ciamac holds degrees from MIT, Cambridge, and Stanford.
Danning Sui
Research Director at Pantera Capital where she leads the firm’s data-driven research efforts and heads the Pantera Research Lab, producing open-source dashboards and rigorous analysis on crypto market mechanics, protocol design, and digital asset strategies. Prior to Pantera, Danning led data teams at Flashbots, 0x Labs, and ConsenSys. She specializes in prediction markets, MEV, DEXs, block-building, and more.
Mallesh Pai
Researcher at Tempo Labs, and Professor in the Department of Economics at Rice University (on leave), a CEPR Research Fellow, and a Research Advisor at Paradigm. His work centers on mechanism design, auction theory, and their applications to blockchains and DeFi. He previously held faculty positions at Rice and the University of Pennsylvania.
Ruizhe Jia
Assistant Professor in Stanford’s Department of Management Science & Engineering. His research focuses on market microstructure, decentralized finance (DeFi), blockchain economics, and AI for financial decision-making. Previously a quantitative trader at Susquehanna International Group, he built DeFi trading and market-making strategies. He holds a Ph.D. in Operations Research from Columbia University and degrees in Mathematics from UCLA.
