Penumbra Research Reports

DeFiDiving Into Dark Pools
By
Anil Lulla•
CEX volume is, on average, 10 times higher than DEXs. Is this just because of a better UI? We think there is more to it. Making financial moves in open, transparent blockchains is not free of consequence. Institutions and individuals alike prefer to keep their dealings private. This pain point is not new to crypto. In TradFi, we’ve had private financial systems such as dark pools that have existed since the 1960s.
In this report, we dive into dark pools and how they preserve trader and order privacy before execution and after settlement. We look at how dark pools leverage different PETs (Privacy Enhancing Technologies) such as ZK FHE, MPC, and TEE to accomplish their purpose.

Layer 1 / L1Everybody Needs *******
By
Anil Lulla•
Blockchain infrastructure can be broadly summarized in three verticals: scalability, privacy, and UX. In this post, we’re going to dive into privacy.

MEVThe Year Ahead for Infrastructure
By
Anil Lulla•
A popular takeaway regarding the FTX drama has been that this was not a DeFi problem, but a TradFi one. It’s absolutely true that custody risks apply to CEXs and not DeFi. Yet, given the size of the collapse, we find it important to ask why, despite all their inherent custodial risks, CEXs continue to attract capital at such higher orders of magnitude.

Macro & MarketsDelphi Office Hours Call (November 17th, 2022)
By
Anil Lulla•
Join us as we discuss early stage projects we're watching, the FTX fallout for NFT and gaming projects, sectors that could be prominent in the next cycle, and debate how effective proof of reserves will be.
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