R-Pool and Settlement Markets for Recoverable ERC-20R Tokens

Abstract: ERC-20R is a wrapper around ERC-20 that supports asset recovery within a limited time window after an asset is transferred. It is designed to reduce theft and losses on the blockchain by allowing a victim to recover their stolen or lost assets during the recovery window. When an honest recipient receives an ERC-20R asset, they must wait until the recovery windows elapses (say, 24 hours), before they can unwrap the asset back to its base ERC-20 form. We argue that many DeFi services will likely refuse to accept unsettled recoverable assets because they can interfere with their normal operations. Consequently, when Alice receives an ERC-20R token, she must wait 24 hours before she can use it with a DeFi service. But what if Alice is willing to pay a fee to exchange the wrapped token for an unwrapped ERC-20 token that can be used right away? In this paper we explore how to design a pool to exchange an unsettled ERC-20R asset for a base ERC-20 of the same asset. Designing such a pool raises several challenging questions and we present our solutions.