{
  "name": "The Validator Account: A New Numéraire for Assets on Blockchains",
  "description": "We introduce the concept of the validator account as a novel numéraire for pricing assets on blockchains with staking. We present staking as a bank-like deposit account, and formalize the validator account as an appropriate discounting numéraire. The validator account allows us to define a blockchain-specific equivalent martingale measure, termed the blockchain measure B. The validator account framework is a novel theoretical contribution, and allows us to extend arbitrage pricing theory to decentralized finance (DeFi).",
  "image": "https://www.tomespel.com/p4.png",
  "external_url": "https://www.tomespel.com/p4/",
  "attributes": [
    {
      "trait_type": "Publication Date",
      "value": "2025-08-29"
    },
    {
      "trait_type": "Paper Type",
      "value": "Working Paper"
    },
    {
      "trait_type": "DOI",
      "value": "10.2139/ssrn.5462475"
    },
    {
      "trait_type": "SSRN ID",
      "value": "5462475"
    },
    {
      "trait_type": "Pages",
      "value": "27"
    },
    {
      "trait_type": "Dataset Period",
      "value": "2025-07-01 to 2025-09-30"
    },
    {
      "trait_type": "Blockchain Analyzed",
      "value": "Ethereum"
    },
    {
      "trait_type": "Blocks Analyzed",
      "value": "656197"
    },
    {
      "trait_type": "Key Contribution",
      "value": "First formal risk-free rate framework for blockchain assets"
    }
  ],
  "properties": {
    "@context": "https://schema.org",
    "@type": "ScholarlyArticle",
    "author": [
      {
        "@type": "Person",
        "name": "Tom J. Espel",
        "affiliation": {
          "@type": "Organization",
          "name": "Independent"
        }
      }
    ],
    "datePublished": "2025-08-29",
    "dateModified": "2025-10-07",
    "keywords": [
      "Blockchain",
      "Numéraire",
      "Staking",
      "Arbitrage Pricing Theory",
      "Validator Account",
      "DeFi",
      "Proof of Stake",
      "Ethereum"
    ],
    "numberOfPages": "27",
    "identifier": [
      {
        "@type": "PropertyValue",
        "propertyID": "DOI",
        "value": "10.2139/ssrn.5462475"
      },
      {
        "@type": "PropertyValue",
        "propertyID": "SSRN",
        "value": "5462475"
      }
    ],
    "url": [
      "https://www.tomespel.com/p4/",
      "https://ssrn.com/abstract=5462475"
    ],
    "citation": [
      {
        "@type": "ScholarlyArticle",
        "name": "The development of Bitcoin futures: Exploring the interactions between cryptocurrency derivatives",
        "author": "E Akyildirim, S Corbet, P Katsiampa, N Kellard, A Sensoy",
        "isPartOf": {
          "@type": "Periodical",
          "name": "Finance Research Letters",
          "volumeNumber": "34"
        },
        "datePublished": "2020"
      },
      {
        "@type": "ScholarlyArticle",
        "name": "Cryptocurrency market microstructure: a systematic literature review",
        "author": "J Almeida, T C Gonçalves",
        "isPartOf": {
          "@type": "Periodical",
          "name": "Annals of Operations Research",
          "volumeNumber": "332"
        },
        "pagination": "1035-1068",
        "datePublished": "2024"
      },
      {
        "@type": "Book",
        "name": "Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market",
        "author": "W Bagehot",
        "datePublished": "1873"
      },
      {
        "@type": "ScholarlyArticle",
        "name": "Stochastic Calculus for Finance",
        "author": "Steven Shreve"
      },
      {
        "@type": "Book",
        "name": "Interest Rate Models",
        "author": "Brigo, Mercurio"
      }
    ],
    "about": [
      {
        "@type": "Thing",
        "name": "Validator Account Framework",
        "description": "Novel numéraire construction using blockchain staking as protocol-conditional risk-free rate"
      },
      {
        "@type": "Thing",
        "name": "Blockchain Measure (B-measure)",
        "description": "Blockchain-specific equivalent martingale measure extending arbitrage pricing theory to DeFi"
      },
      {
        "@type": "Thing",
        "name": "Empirical Validation",
        "description": "92 days of Ethereum data (656,197 blocks) validating staking rate as risk-free rate with 7.18% coefficient of variation"
      },
      {
        "@type": "Thing",
        "name": "MEV Exclusion",
        "description": "Maximum Extractable Value excluded due to 40%+ coefficient of variation and presence in only 92% of blocks"
      },
      {
        "@type": "Thing",
        "name": "Vasicek Model",
        "description": "Interest rate model fitted to daily staking rate with KS p-value of 0.65"
      },
      {
        "@type": "Thing",
        "name": "LST Pricing",
        "description": "Application to Lido sETH revealing 0.14% annualized liquidity premium"
      }
    ],
    "inLanguage": "en",
    "temporalCoverage": "2025-07-01/2025-09-30",
    "spatialCoverage": {
      "@type": "Place",
      "name": "Ethereum Blockchain"
    }
  }
}