Stylized facts in Web3

TL;DR

This study analyzes the statistical properties of Web3 tokens, revealing that they share common empirical features with traditional assets, and compares centralized and decentralized exchange data to understand market dynamics.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive statistical comparison of Web3 tokens and traditional assets, highlighting stylized facts and market similarities across exchange types.

Findings

Tokens exhibit heavy-tailed return distributions.

Volatility clustering is prevalent across tokens.

DEXs show similar stylized facts to CEXs despite different mechanisms.

Abstract

This paper presents a comprehensive statistical analysis of the Web3 ecosystem, comparing various Web3 tokens with traditional financial assets across multiple time scales. We examine probability distributions, tail behaviors, and other key stylized facts of the returns for a diverse range of tokens, including decentralized exchanges, liquidity pools, and centralized exchanges. Despite functional differences, most tokens exhibit well-established empirical facts, including unconditional probability density of returns with heavy tails gradually becoming Gaussian and volatility clustering. Furthermore, we compare assets traded on centralized (CEX) and decentralized (DEX) exchanges, finding that DEXs exhibit similar stylized facts despite different trading mechanisms and often divergent long-term performance. We propose that this similarity is attributable to arbitrageurs striving to maintain similar centralized and decentralized prices. Our study contributes to a better understanding of the dynamics of Web3 tokens and the relationship between CEX and DEX markets, with important implications for risk management, pricing models, and portfolio construction in the rapidly evolving DeFi landscape. These results add to the growing body of literature on cryptocurrency markets and provide insights that can guide the development of more accurate models for DeFi markets.