Measuring DeFi Risks

We elicited a measurement in cryptocurrency recently:

Will an attack on a DeFi network with losses exceeding $100m be reported by rekt.news before 2022-06-01? #

The forecast relied on observations from rekt as a proxy for whether a large loss in the DeFi ecosystem has taken place or not.

7 panelists were elicited with an average of 49.2% Yes and a Brier Score of 0.6507142857142857. The spread was very wide, with Yes submissions ranging from 15% - 95%.

I personally did poorly with a forecast of 30%.

A huge breach happened shortly after the forecast was organized with a postmortem found here: Community Alert: Ronin Validators Compromised

Judgement on this as being a “DeFi Network” was difficult. I was originally skeptical to classify it as a DeFi network.

The Ronin Bridge serves to exchange cryptocurrency into a usable in-game token. The use of a Distributed Exchange and the bridge, as well widespread classification by reputable security firms (1, 2) are supporting this conclusion.

Some better language about what is or is not a “DeFi” network or application could be used in the future.

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