Xiaotong Sun

My research interests generally lie in the area of blockchain and cryptofinance. I am particularly interested in Decentralized Finance (DeFi) and Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO). Currently, I focus on empirical evidence of centralization in blockchain, especially governance centralization in DAO.

Voter coalitions and democracy in Decentralized Finance: Evidence from MakerDAO. Working paper (with Xi Chen, Charalampos Stasinakis and Georgios Sermpinis).
Liquidity Risks in Lending Protocols: Evidence from Aave Protocol. Working paper (with Charalampos Stasinakis and Georgios Sermpinis).
Decentralized illusion in Decentralized Finance: Evidence from tokenized voting in MakerDAO polls. Working paper (with Charalampos Stasinakis and Georgios Sermpinis).
Bribes to Miners: Evidence from Ethereum. Working paper.

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

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 am currently a Graduate Teaching Assistant (GTA) at Adam Smith Business School. I am involved in courses below:
2022 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