Digital Currency and FinTech
Research on crypto markets, DeFi, smart contracts, and the financial microstructure of emerging digital systems.
And, behold, there are last which shall be first, and there are first which shall be last.
καὶ ἰδοὺ εἰσὶν ἔσχατοι οἳ ἔσονται πρῶτοι, καὶ εἰσὶν πρῶτοι οἳ ἔσονται ἔσχατοι.
Research lab · Hong Kong — Beijing — Remote
Digital markets, mechanism design, and AI-native economic inquiry.
Adrasteia Labs brings together economists and computer scientists to study digital currency, DeFi, market design, and empirical strategy for emerging economic systems.
Founded by a group of doctoral and undergraduate students from Peking University, the University of Hong Kong, the University of Chicago, the University of Michigan, and other universities across China and North America, the lab has grown over several years into a premier student research collective at the frontier of finance, technology, and economic design.
Αδράστεια — “she from whom there is no escape” — a fitting patron for the study of incentive-compatible mechanisms.
Research
Three areas shape the portfolio.
Mechanism Design and Market Design
Fair and incentive-compatible allocation rules, strategic behavior, and algorithmic game theory in financial and digital markets.
AI for Social Science
AI-driven workflows, empirical automation, and meta-science approaches for faster and more transparent research across economics and the social sciences.
Selected work
Publications and working papers.
A Blessing in Disguise? DeFi Exploits and Short-Horizon Responses in U.S. Commercial Paper Spreads
Working Paper
Presented at: Yale Pre-Doctoral Economics Conference (Yale Tobin Center); Asia Meeting of the Econometric Society, China (HKU Business School); FMA International European Conference*; 5th Annual Hong Kong Conference on FinTech and AI in Finance (City University of Hong Kong) (* presented by coauthor)
Empirical Economics
Adrasteia: AI Agent Workflow for Economic Paper Writing
Accepted at the ICML 2026 Workshop on AI for Math
Presented at: EC'26 Workshop on AI-Driven Research in EconCS (oral contributed talk); Can AI Do Theory? Workshop at STOC TheoryFest 2026 (Google Research); AEA Annual Meeting 2027 (scheduled)
AI for Social Science
Smart Contracts, Dumb Money: Open Source Lemons
Kilts Center at Chicago Booth Marketing Data Center Paper
Presented at: Bank of Italy ToDeFi 2026*; CCER Summer Institute (* presented by coauthor)
Game Theory & Information Economics
Smoothing the Cliff: Fair and Incentive-Compatible Priority Allocation via Randomized Mechanisms
Presented at: EC'26 Workshop on Online Learning and Economics; 12th Tsinghua University SEM Graduate Workshop (Outstanding Presentation Paper Award); EEA-ESEM*; ESIF Economics and AI+ML Meeting (Cornell University)*; KOF Swiss Economic Institute at ETH Zurich*; Peking University National School of Development (* presented by coauthor)
Game Theory & Mechanism Design
The Private Enforcer: Algorithmic Deterrence and the Shadow Tax on Insider Trading
Working Paper
Presented at: Federal Reserve Board Summer Workshop on Money, Banking, Payments, and Finance (Gerzensee, Switzerland); China Financial Research Conference (Tsinghua PBCSF); Asia Meeting of the Econometric Society, China (HKU Business School); 38th Asian Finance Association Conference* (* presented by coauthor)
Game Theory & Mechanism Design
People
Economists and computer scientists across five departments.
Founding Director and Department Coordinator
Heikichi Hayashi
Adrasteia Labs; Research Assistant at The University of Hong Kong
FinTech · Economics and computation · Algorithmic game theory
Core Member
Weiyu Qi
University of Chicago, Department of Computer Science
Blockchain algorithms · CS theory · AI
Core Member
Karl Yu
Boston College, Economics Department
Crypto incentives · Algorithmic game theory · Mechanism design
Opportunities
Join us.
We welcome talented junior undergraduates and high school students who love blockchain and cryptocurrency, or who want to learn game theory and mechanism design and their applications, to join us or work with us as research assistants. We keep close ties with blockchain research clubs at many universities and secondary schools.
Past research assistants include students from Sun Yat-sen University, the Central University of Finance and Economics, and Beijing National Day School.
Contact
Working with the lab.
For research inquiries, collaborations, workshop invitations, or academic correspondence, write to the lab directly.