TLDR Research Fellowships

Apply for a TLDR Fellowship

The fellows program is for engineers, academics and students who want to shape the future of decentralized finance. They bring their various professional experiences and skills into the DeFi Ecosystem. As a Fellow, you’ll immerse yourself in the world of DeFi while crafting your own unique journey.

Applications are closed

How It Works

HYBRID FORMAT
The fellowship begins remotely in the fall, with a kickoff call with your mentor. Throughout the year, we will host events around upcoming research conferences.

FELLOWSHIP KICKOFF
During the first month, you will have a kick off call with your mentor, where you will set the frequency of your meetings and how you will use your time. By the end of this month you should have a clear plan to work towards for the duration of your Fellowship.

DELIVERABLES
Deliverables at the end of the program: Either a paper or open github repo if work is ongoing, a talk at the Inaugural TLDR Conference in May 2024, a blog post that explains your work.

Fellowship Benefits

Salary

You’ll receive a $10,000-$25,000 stipend for the duration of your fellowship, giving you time to focus on your DeFi research.

Support

You will have access to a dedicated mentor who has domain expertise in the topic you’re writing on.

Network

You’ll have the opportunity to meet the cohort of fellows and council at events. In addition, you will present your research at the TLDR Conference in 2025.

Meet The Mentors

Selected for their expertise and contributions in the field, our three mentors are at the forefront of driving innovation alongside our TLDR fellows.

Mallesh Pai

Rice University and Consensys Inc

“Censorship Resistance in On-Chain Auctions”

Market Microstructure for MEV, Blockchain Mechanism Design

Max Resnick

Special Mechanisms Group

“An Efficient Algorithm for Optimal Routing Through Constant Function Market Makers”

CFMMs, MEV, Censorship Resistance

Thomas Thiery

Ethereum Foundation

"Time is Money: Strategic Timing Games in Proof-of-Stake Protocols"

MEV supply network, Censorship Resistance, Protocol Mechanism Design, CL and EL data

Meet the Fellows

Out of 187 applicants, these 18 researchers were selected by the Research Council for the 2024-2025 TLDR Fellowship.

Adam Bouabda

Dynamic CFFMs

Master’s student in Mathematics at ETH Zurich

Alexander Herrmann

MEV Resistant L2 Sequencers

Math Master of Science Leibniz University

Andrew Macpherson

Blockspace Futures

Founder, Shtuka Research

Benjamin Kraner

Understanding Risk in Restaking

PhD student at the UZH Blockchain Center

Bruno Mazorra

Sybil Proofness and Collusion Resistance

Master of Science in Mathematics through the ALGANT program

Christof Ferreira Torres

All About MEV & PBS

Assistant Professor at Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), University of Lisbon

Diego Estevez

MEV Resistant L2 Sequencers

Researcher and protocol engineer

Fei Wu

All About MEV & PBS

CS PhD at King’s College London

Koshi Ota

Comparing DeFi Trading Platforms

Econ BA at Keio

Marco Francischello

Understanding Risk in Restaking

Researcher at Scuola Normale Superiore

Mengqian Zhang

Novel Designs for Decentralized Markets

Postdoctoral Associate at Yale University

Michele Fabi

Novel Designs for Decentralized Markets

Assistant Professor at Telecom Paris, CREST, IP Paris.

Miha Lotric

Comparing DeFi Trading Platforms

DeFi RnD

Sina Pilehchiha

Identifying ZKP Pricing Factors & Auction Mechanisms

Security Researcher at Scroll

Stefanos Chaliasos

Identifying ZKP Pricing Factors & Auction Mechanisms

CS PhD at Imperial College London and Security Researcher at zkSecurity

Vedartham Bharath

Blockspace Futures

Engineer at Astria Labs

Yiyun Zheng

Sybil Proofness and Collusion Resistance

Econ PhD at École Polytechnique/ENSAE

Yuki Yuminaga

Comparing DeFi Trading Platforms

Founding Research & Growth at Sorella Labs / Research Partner at Fenbushi Capital

Meet the Research Council

John Adler

Director of Protocol Engineering

"Building Scalable Decentralized Payment Systems"

blockchain protocol design, incentive structures, resource pricing

Guillermo Angeris

Head of research at Bain Capital Crypto

“Improved Price Oracles: Constant Function Market Makers ” and "Concave pro-rata games "

OPTIMIZATION, CFMMS, PROBABILITY

Tarun Chitra

Gauntlet, Robot Ventures

“Improved price oracles: Constant function market makers" and "Towards a theory of maximal extractable value i: Constant function market makers”

CONVEX OPTIMIZATION, CFMMS, MEV, AUCTIONS, SPIN GLASSES

Theo Diamandis

PhD student at MIT and researcher at Bain Capital Crypto

“Dynamic Pricing for Non-fungible Resources: Designing Multidimensional Blockchain Fee Markets”

OPTIMIZATION, CONVEX ANALYSIS, MEV, CFMMS

Matheus Venturyne Xavier Ferreira

Harvard Postdoctoral Fellow

“Credible Decentralized Exchange Design via Verifiable Sequencing Rules”

AI, ALGORITHMIC ECONOMICS AND SECURITY

Pranav Garimidi

a16z Crypto Research

"Transaction Fee Mechanism Design in a Post-MEV World"

MEV, Auction Design, Fee Mechanisms, Algorithmic Game Theory

Assimakis Kattis (Aki)

New York University

“RedShift: Transparent SNARKs from List Polynomial Commitments”

ZERO-KNOWLEDGE PROOF DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT, CONSENSUS PROTOCOLS AND ZKP MECHANISM DESIGN

Kshitij Kulkarni

UC Berkeley / Gauntlet

"Routing MEV in Constant Function Market Makers" and "An Analysis of Intent Based Markets"

Mechanism design, game theory, optimization

Mallesh Pai

Associate Professor, Rice University and Principal Researcher, Consensys Inc

"Censorship Resistance in On-Chain Auctions" (with Elijah Fox and Max Resnick)

Market Microstructure for MEV, Blockchain Mechanism Design

Dan Robinson

Paradigm

"Leaderless Auctions"

MEV Auctions, L2 Sequencers, Power Perpetuals

Raffi Sapire

Uniswap Foundation

MEV + Oracle research implemented as hooks on Uniswap v4, Flashloan/sandwich auctions, Routers, Incentive Design

Danning Sui

Flashbots

“Measuring the impact of hidden DEX costs”

MEV, DEX, DATA RESEARCH

John Adler

Director of Protocol Engineering

"Building Scalable Decentralized Payment Systems"

blockchain protocol design, incentive structures, resource pricing

Sarah Allen

Flashbots, IC3

“Forsage: Anatomy of a Smart-Contract Pyramid Scheme”

Governance, DAOs, voting schemes, decentralized identity, all things MEV, and empirical studies and attacks for any of the above

Guillermo Angeris

Head of research at Bain Capital Crypto

“Improved Price Oracles: Constant Function Market Makers ” and "Concave pro-rata games "

OPTIMIZATION, CFMMS, PROBABILITY

Tarun Chitra

Gauntlet, Robot Ventures

“Improved price oracles: Constant function market makers" and "Towards a theory of maximal extractable value i: Constant function market makers”

CONVEX OPTIMIZATION, CFMMS, MEV, AUCTIONS, SPIN GLASSES

Theo Diamandis

PhD student at MIT and researcher at Bain Capital Crypto

“Dynamic Pricing for Non-fungible Resources: Designing Multidimensional Blockchain Fee Markets”

OPTIMIZATION, CONVEX ANALYSIS, MEV, CFMMS

Matheus Venturyne Xavier Ferreira

Harvard Postdoctoral Fellow

“Credible Decentralized Exchange Design via Verifiable Sequencing Rules”

AI, ALGORITHMIC ECONOMICS AND SECURITY

Pranav Garimidi

a16z Crypto Research

"Transaction Fee Mechanism Design in a Post-MEV World"

MEV, Auction Design, Fee Mechanisms, Algorithmic Game Theory

Assimakis Kattis (Aki)

New York University

“RedShift: Transparent SNARKs from List Polynomial Commitments”

ZERO-KNOWLEDGE PROOF DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT, CONSENSUS PROTOCOLS AND ZKP MECHANISM DESIGN

Ariah Klages-Mundt

Superluminal Labs

“While Stability Lasts: A Stochastic Model of Non-Custodial Stablecoins”

Design and analysis of DeFi mechanisms (including stablecoins, AMMs, oracles, governance systems), modeling economic security, modeling risk and contagion in DeFi protocols

Kshitij Kulkarni

UC Berkeley / Gauntlet

"Routing MEV in Constant Function Market Makers" and "An Analysis of Intent Based Markets"

Mechanism design, game theory, optimization

Jason Milionis

Columbia University

“A Myersonian Framework for Optimal Liquidity Provision in Automated Market Makers”

decentralized mechanism design, game dynamics, auction design, algorithmic game theory

Mallesh Pai

Associate Professor, Rice University and Principal Researcher, Consensys Inc

"Censorship Resistance in On-Chain Auctions" (with Elijah Fox and Max Resnick)

MEV Auctions, new defi implementations

Dan Robinson

Paradigm

"Leaderless Auctions"

MEV Auctions, L2 Sequencers, Power Perpetuals

Raphaela Sapire

Uniswap Foundation

MEV + Oracle research implemented as hooks on Uniswap v4, Flashloan/sandwich auctions, Routers, Incentive Design

Danning Sui

Flashbots

“Measuring the impact of hidden DEX costs”

MEV, DEX, DATA RESEARCH

2024-2025 Problem Spaces

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Past Fellows

After reviewing 107 applicants, 9 outstanding researchers were selected for the first round of TLDR fellowships.

Andrés Fábrega

GOVERNANCE DECENTRALIZATION GAME THEORY

Cornell University

Burak Öz

BLOCK BIDDING ECOMONICS ON MEV-BOOST

Technical University of Munich

Ghada Almashaqbeh

AMMBOOST: STATE GROWTH CONTROL FOR AMMS

University of Connecticut

Itamar Reif

ZK FEE MECHANISM DESIGN

Astria

Kaihua Qin

IMPLEMENTATION OF DEFI MECHANISMS

Imperial College London

Lily Johnson

IMPLEMENTATION OF DEFI MECHANISMS

Independent Security Researcher

Mohammadreza Ahmadnejadsaein

GOVERNANCE DECENTRALIZATION GAME THEORY

Cornell University

Ruizhe Jia

BLOCK BIDDING ECOMONICS ON MEV-BOOST

Columbia University

Yotam Gafni

IMPROVED MEV AUCTIONS

Technion - Israel Institute of Technology