Senior Researcher, Mechanism Design
Skills
About the Role
You will design and evaluate mechanisms that optimize economic security, decentralization, performance, compatibility, and ease of use. You will analyze potential attack vectors and design mitigations, advise on technical merits of external systems, collaborate with engineers to design and test mechanism options, and write about your findings for internal and public audiences. You will work on transaction ordering, staking (including liquid staking), consensus, spam prevention, on-chain randomness, and light client security.
Requirements
- Excellent knowledge of blockchain mechanism design, including transaction ordering and MEV
- Knowledge of staking and economic security including delegation economics and slashing
- Knowledge of consensus mechanisms such as pBFT, Tendermint, and Gasper
- Knowledge of spam prevention and trustlessness including light clients and merkle proofs
- Excellent knowledge of DeFi primitives including AMMs, bridges, and oracles
- Excellent technical communication skills
- Extreme technical curiosity
- Attention to detail
- Creativity, resourcefulness, and independence
- Clarity of thought and enthusiasm for learning and teaching
Responsibilities
- Design and evaluate mechanisms that optimize economic security, decentralization, performance, compatibility, and ease of use
- Evaluate potential attack vectors and design mitigations
- Advise the team on technical merits of other systems such as bridges and DeFi protocols
- Stay up to date on mechanism design practices and develop informed opinions
- Collaborate with engineering to design and test new mechanism options
- Write and publish findings for internal and public audiences
Benefits
- Medical dental and vision insurance
- Unlimited paid time off
- 401(k) retirement plan with company match
- Lunch and dinner stipend (in-office NYC)
- Monthly wellness benefit
- Paid parental leave
- Equity package