Theft of Crypto Assets

Decentralized Finance (DeFi) stands for a paradigm shift in digital financial services. The innovative blockchain technology of the cryptocurrency platform Ethereum provides the ability to deploy software programs, which enables the development of virtual cryptoassets and financial services, to lend or exchange them. DeFi services are a rapidly growing ecosystem, with more than 30 billion total of value locked on Ethereum. Such worth, coupled with the transparency of DeFi software and users’ pseudonymity have made this ecosystem attractive to crime. Indeed, crime events against DeFi projects have been reported daily in the past year. The objective of this research is to map, quantify, and understand DeFi crime events from an on-chain perspective. Systematic investigations of transaction flows and smart contract functions calls will be conducted for each crime event. These will be supplemented with an analysis on the crimes’ modus operandi. This interdisciplinary study, mixing computer science and criminology, will shed light on criminal activities within the DeFi ecosystem.

Faculty Supervisor:

Masarah Paquet-Clouston

Student:

Partner:

Technische Universität Wien

Discipline:

Computer science

Sector:

Public Service, Policy, and Governance; Finance and Insurance

University:

Université de Montréal

Program: