Real-time Risk Metrics for Programmatic Stablecoin Crypto Asset-Liability Management (CALM)

Abstract: Stablecoins have turned out to be the "killer" use case of the growing digital asset space. However, risk management frameworks, including regulatory ones, have been largely absent. In this paper, we address the critical question of measuring and managing risk in stablecoin protocols, which operate on public blockchain infrastructure. The on-chain environment makes it possible to monitor risk and automate its management via transparent smart-contracts in real-time. We propose two risk metrics covering capitalization and liquidity of stablecoin protocols. We then explore in a case-study type analysis how our risk management framework can be applied to DAI, the biggest decentralized stablecoin by market capitalisation to-date, governed by MakerDAO. Based on our findings, we recommend that the protocol explores implementing automatic capital buffer adjustments and dynamic maturity gap matching. Our analysis demonstrates the practical benefits for scalable (prudential) risk management stemming from real-time availability of high-quality, granular, tamper-resistant on-chain data in the digital asset space. We name this approach Crypto Asset-Liability Management (CALM).