Research

Decentralized Finance & Financial Technology

WORKING PAPERS

• The Paradox of Just-in-Time Liquidity in Decentralized Exchanges: More Providers Can Lead To Less Liquidity
  Agostino Capponi, Ruizhe Jia, and Brian Z. Zhu
  Working Paper
  Talks: China International Conference in Finance 2024, Inter-Finance PhD Seminar, University of Michigan (Byrne Conference 2024), University of Chicago (Stevanovich Center Conference 2024), University of Toronto, The Latest in DeFi Research Conference 2024, Sydney Market Microstructure Conference 2023, INFORMS 2023

• Privacy-Enhanced Payment Systems
  Agostino Capponi, Michael J. Lee, and Brian Z. Zhu
  Working Paper
  Talks: INFORMS 2025, GSU-MS FinTech Conference 2025, European Finance Association 2025, Bank of Canada (ICPSS 2025), Swiss National Bank (Cryptoasset and Financial Innovation Conference 2025), CREST Future of Money Workshop 2025

• Auctioning Time to Mitigate Latency Races: Theory and Evidence from Blockchains
  Agostino Capponi, Brian Z. Zhu
  Working Paper

• From Pools to Books: Modeling DeFi Liquidity in TradFi Terms
  Agostino Capponi and Brian Z. Zhu
  Manuscript available upon request

CONFERENCE & WORKSHOP PROCEEDINGS

• Quantifying the Value of Revert Protection
  Brian Z. Zhu, Xin Wan, Ciamac C. Moallemi, Dan Robinson, and Brad Bachu
  Financial Cryptography and Data Security 2025
  Talks: The Science of Blockchain Conference 2025, UC Santa Barbara (FBC Summit 2025), The Latest in DeFi Research Conference 2025, Financial Cryptography 2025

• What Drives Liquidity on Decentralized Exchanges?
  Brian Z. Zhu, Dingyue Liu, Xin Wan, Gordon Liao, Ciamac C. Moallemi, and Brad Bachu
  Cryptoasset Analytics Workshop @ FC 2025
  Talks: Ethereum Community Conference 2025, University of Chicago (Stevanovich Center Conference 2025), Cryptoasset Analytics Workshop 2025, University of Sydney

• Information Structures in Stablecoin Markets
  Brian Z. Zhu
  Decentralized Finance Workshop @ FC 2026
  
  

Machine Learning & Artificial Intelligence

WORKING PAPERS

• Semantic Trading: Agentic AI for Clustering and Discovery in Prediction Markets
  Agostino Capponi, Alfio Gliozzo, Brian Z. Zhu
  Working Paper

PUBLICATIONS

• Unsupervised machine learning reveals slab hydration variations from deep earthquake distributions beneath the northwest Pacific
  Gilbert L. Mao, Thomas P. Ferrand, Jiaqi Li, Brian Z. Zhu, Ziyi Xi, Min Chen
  Communications Earth and Environment, Vol. 3, Art. 56 (2022)