Flash loans, flash attacks, and the future of DeFi

Aidan Saggers, Lukas Alemu and Irina Mnohoghitnei

Decentralised Finance (DeFi) may seem a tempting option for those seeking financial gain, autonomy, and self-governance… But how safe is a world in which ‘code is law’? Closer inspection reveals an ecosystem experiencing several hacks, attacks, and fraud. Estimates show at least US$6.5 billion has been stolen since DeFi’s inception, and one particular DeFi feature is often at the centre of this theft – flash loans. Unlimited, ungoverned, and uncollateralised, flash loans give hackers the toolkit to highly leverage their potential attacks. The only cost is the gas fees required to send the transaction. In this blog post we consider the world of flash loans and their criminal counterpart – flash attacks.

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Supervisory governance, capture and non-performing loans

Nicolò Fraccaroli

Recent reforms that followed the Great Financial Crisis, as the establishment of the Single Supervisory Mechanism in Europe and the Prudential Regulatory Authority in the UK, reflect the belief that the governance of banking supervision affects financial stability. However, while existing research identifies the pros and cons of having either a central bank or a separate agency responsible for microprudential banking supervision, the advantages of having this task shared by both institutions (shared supervision) have received considerably less attention.

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Bitesize: How much did PPI subsidise personal loan rates pre-crisis?

David Seaward

The Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) mis-selling scandal has rumbled on for years. But how did PPI impact loan margins pre-crisis?

This post argues that income from cross-selling PPI substantially offset lenders’ margins on personal loans between 2004 and 2009, and compares the pre-crisis PPI-adjusted margin to loan spreads today.

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