Digital Currency and FinTech
Research on crypto markets, DeFi, smart contracts, and the financial microstructure of emerging digital systems.
Adrasteia Labs
Research on digital markets, mechanism design, and AI-native economic inquiry.
Founded by Heikichi Hayashi, Adrasteia Labs brings together collaborators in economics and computer science to study digital currency, FinTech, DeFi, market design, and empirical strategy for emerging economic systems.
The lab develops theory-informed empirical research, collaborative data workflows, and AI-assisted research infrastructure for questions at the frontier of finance, technology, and economic design.
09
core researchers and affiliates
08
papers across review, working, and in-progress stages
02
research projects currently on the site
Research profile
Three areas shape the lab's portfolio.
Mechanism Design and Market Design
Fair and incentive-compatible allocation rules, strategic behavior, and algorithmic game theory in financial and digital markets.
AI for Economic Research
AI-driven workflows, empirical automation, and meta-economics approaches for faster and more transparent research production.
Mission
An interdisciplinary lab organized around finance, digital markets, and AI-assisted research.
Adrasteia Labs advances interdisciplinary research across digital finance, mechanism design, and computational approaches to economic inquiry.
Digital markets
The lab studies crypto markets, DeFi, smart contracts, insider trading, and broader strategic behavior in digital finance.
Mechanism design
Current work includes randomized mechanisms, incentive compatibility, and market design problems shaped by real digital and financial settings.
AI-native workflows
Adrasteia Labs also explores AI for economic research, combining empirical methods, automation, and collaborative workflows for faster research production.
Featured publications
Current papers move directly into the public research pipeline.
The homepage highlights papers currently under review, circulating working papers, and selected projects in development.
Working Paper
Heikichi Hayashi (2026). Working Paper.
A Blessing in Disguise? DeFi Exploits and Short-Horizon Responses in U.S. Commercial Paper Spreads
DeFi exploits generate short-run spillovers into traditional financial markets via money market fund reallocations, creating a measurable cross-market transmission channel.
Accepted
Heikichi Hayashi (2026). Accepted at ICML 2026 Workshop on Human-AI Co-Creativity.
Adrasteia: AI Agent Workflow for Economic Paper Writing
Adrasteia presents a human-in-the-loop AI agent workflow for economic paper writing, spanning assumption search, model structuring, argument revision, and referee-style critique.
Under Review
Heikichi Hayashi, Karl Yu, Huanxi Zhang, and Weiyu Qi (2025). Kilts Center at Chicago Booth Marketing Data Center Paper.
Smart Contracts, Dumb Money: Open Source Lemons
The project examines information quality, adverse selection, and investor behavior in open-source smart-contract environments and digital asset markets.
Projects
Projects highlight the lab's broader research agenda.
The project page tracks larger research themes and longer-horizon work alongside the paper pipeline.
Active
Adrasteia: AI Agent Workflow for Economic Paper Writing
Accepted at the ICML 2026 Workshop on Human-AI Co-Creativity. A human-in-the-loop agentic workflow for moving economic research from an initial question to defensible assumptions, model structure, argument revision, and referee-style critique.
Team: Heikichi Hayashi
Design
The Elite School Custodianship Effect
A work-in-progress project on the impact of super high school group-based schooling on students' human capital, developed in collaboration with Beijing National Day School.
Team: Heikichi Hayashi
People
The lab brings together collaborators across economics, computer science, and finance.
Team profiles present current affiliations, research interests, and direct contact details for core members and collaborators.
Heikichi Hayashi
Founding Director and Department Coordinator
Lab Leadership and Empirical Causal Inference
Adrasteia Labs; Research Assistant at The University of Hong Kong
Founder of Adrasteia Labs. Heikichi Hayashi coordinates the lab's blockchain and crypto research departments and leads empirical causal-inference research on DeFi and cryptocurrency markets.
Weiyu Qi
Core Member
CS Theory, Algorithms, and AI
University of Chicago, Department of Computer Science
Core member focused on computer science theory, algorithms, and AI for blockchain systems, crypto market design, and economic computation.
Karl Yu
Core Member
Theoretical Algorithmic Game Theory and Mechanism Design
Boston College, Economics Department
Core member focused on theoretical algorithmic game theory, mechanism design, and incentive foundations for blockchain and crypto market design.
Contact
Connect with Adrasteia Labs.
For research inquiries, collaborations, workshop invitations, or academic correspondence, please contact the lab directly.