Xiaotong Sun

My research interests centre around FinTech, with a particular focus on Decentralized Finance (DeFi) and Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAO). Currently, I am studying the intricacies of governance centralization within DAOs and examining financial risks in DeFi. Additionally, I am passionate about business practices in the DeFi space and exploring opportunities to incubate DeFi projects. If you are interested in potential collaboration in these areas, please feel free to contact me.

Decentralized illusion in Decentralized Finance: Evidence from tokenized voting in MakerDAO polls. Journal of Financial Stability, 2024 (with Charalampos Stasinakis and Georgios Sermpinis).

Voter coalitions and democracy in Decentralized Finance: Evidence from MakerDAO. Working paper, manuscript available upon request (with Michele Fabi, Xi Chen, Charalampos Stasinakis and Georgios Sermpinis).
Liquidity Risks in Lending Protocols: Evidence from Aave Protocol. Working paper (with Charalampos Stasinakis and Georgios Sermpinis).
Bribes to Miners: Evidence from Ethereum. Working paper.

PhD in Finance, University of Glasgow (2020 - 2024)
MSc in Financial Mathematics, University of Leeds (2018 - 2019)
BEcon in Mathematical Economics, Fudan University (2014 - 2018)

July 3, 2024 - guest lecture, IESEG School of Management, France
June 12 - June 14, 2024 - Finance and Business Analytics Conference, Athens, Greece
June 28 - July 1, 2023 -the 32nd European Financial Management Association (EFMA) conference, Cardiff, UK
May 26, 2023 - UCSB-Econ DeFi seminar, UC Santa Barbara
May 17, 2023 - BlockSem@Paris, École Polytechnique, Paris, France
December 16-17, 2022 - World Finance Banking Symposium 2022, Miami, USA
December 14-16, 2022 - the 35th Australasian Finance & Banking Conference, Sydney, Australia, invited talk
October 12, 2022 - Cardiff FinTech Conference 2022, Cardiff, UK
September 22-23, 2022 - Cryptocurrency Research Conference 2022 (CRC2022), Durham, UK
June 29 - July 1, 2022 - International Conference on Forecasting Financial Markets, Milan, Italy
May 6, 2022 - The 2nd Workshop on Decentralized Finance (DeFi) In Association with Financial Cryptography 2022, Grenada
September 16-17, 2021 - Cryptocurrency Research Conference 2021 (CRC2021)
June 28, 2021 - Scottish Doctoral Colloquium in Accounting and Finance (ScotDoc2021)

Dec 2022 - Travel grant, Asian Development Bank
May 2022 - Travel grant, Harmony Blockchain through ResearchDAO

Teaching

I teach for the Bachelor of Applied Economics Programme and Master of Science in Financial Technology Programme at CityU Macau.
2024/25 S1 Study Report 1, Undergraduate Level
2024/25 S1 Introduction to Financial Technology, Master Level
I was a Graduate Teaching Assistant at Adam Smith Business School. I was involved in the courses below:
2022,23 Foundations of Financial Technology, Master Level
2021,22 Corporate Finance and Investment, Master Level
2022 Risk Management and Derivative Securities, Master Level
2021 Foundations of Finance, Undergraduate level

2021 - Best PhD paper, awarded by Cryptocurrency Research Conference
2020 - First Prize in Global FinTech Application and Innovation Competition, awarded by Fudan University and Peking University
2019 - First prize in UBS Global Markets Hackathon, awarded by UBS
2016 - Excellent Project Award, awarded by Hope Project
2015 - Silver Award of 4th China Charity Fair, awarded by China Charity Federation
2015 - Individual Award, awarded by Fudan University
2014 - First-class Scholarship, awarded by Fudan University