Research

The Decentralized Finance Group is a joint research center located at the Department of Computer Science at the University of Copenhagen led by Dr. Omri Ross. The group promotes applied multidisciplinary research, addressing computational challenges in the financial industries. We are involved in a range of academic and commercial projects and accepts applications from highly qualified PhD candidates and Post Doc’s on an ongoing basis.

Digital Asset Infrastructure

We address the application of digital asset infrastructure, with emphasis on computational problems in the post-trade cycle. Our research approaches the creation and management of digital assets.

Compliance Optimization

Compliance, reporting and transparency are defining properties of the decade ahead. Our research addresses transaction reporting and data sharing issues with emphasis on mitigating risks and reducing costs in key business processes.

Domain Specific Programming Languages

We design and implement declarative and formally verified domain specific languages for financial contracts with emphasis on improving security and mitigating execution risks in the evaluation of financial contracts on distributed ledger technology, or permissionless blockchains.

Decentralized Governance

The future of finance will be built on permissionless decentralized computational infrastructure. Thus far, the majority of these systems are maintained by open-source communities and non-profit entities.

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Omri Ross

Omri Ross leads the Decentralized Finance Group and serves as Assitant Professor at the Department of Computer Science at the University of Copenhagen. Omri is passionate about research at the intersection of applied computer science and financial technologies. As a seasoned entrepreneur, Omri has continuously sought to build bridges between industry and academia. Omri currently serves as Chief Blokchain Scientist and Managing Director of eToroX Labs, a dedicated research unit of the global online brokerage firm, eToro.

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Johannes Rude Jensen

Johannes is a founding member and acting research coordinator at the Financial Transparency Group. Johannes is managing our research projects while liaising between industrial, academic and regulatory stakeholders. Johannes has published extensively in leading venues on a wide range of topics on the application of blockchain and distributed ledger technology in finance and on open-source governance. Johannes is product and project manager at eToroX Labs.

Alexandra Andhov

Alexandra Andhov (Horváthová) is Assistant Professor of Corporate law at CEVIA – Centre for Enterprise Liability. She was a Fulbright Scholar at Cornell Law School in the United States. Alexandra’s main areas of research are corporate law, capital market law, corporate social responsibility and contract law. Currently, Alexandra’s research explores the use of blockchain technology within corporations and corporate governance as well as various regulatory aspects of FinTech and effects of novel technology on the division of power and control among diverse groups of stakeholders.

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Michel Avital

Mihcel Avital is Professor at the Copenhagen Business School. He is a celebrated researcher frequently pioneering research in leading journals and proceedings. Design and innovation are the leitmotif in his work, examining the crossroads of information, technology, and people. His research combines both soft and hard methods to advance theory and knowledge about how information technologies are developed, applied, managed and consumed in the context of human organizations. Michel is particularly interested in research of enduring consequence and value partnerships with business organizations as well as the community at large.

José Parra Moyano

José Parra-Moyano is Assistant Professor at the Copenhagen Business School. His research bridges theoretical and commercial contributions in the fields of Information Systems and Management Science, emphasizing blockchain information systems, data markets, and applied econometrics. José has been appointed Global Shaper by the World Economic Forum, FORBES 30 UNDER 30, Research Fellow at the Blockchain Center of the University College London, and Head of the Blockchain Research Lab of the Chair of Quantitative Business Administration of the University of Zurich. He has taught courses on data analytics, statistics, and blockchain at the University of Zurich, Mannheim Business School, Rochester-Bern University, and Swisscom Blockchain Academy.

Bassel Mannaa

Bassel Mannaa is senior developer at the commercial research and development unit, eToroX Labs. His research emphasises type theory and denotational semantics. Bassel is an experienced engineer with over ten years of experience in database architecture. Presently, Bassel is exploring the implications of utilizing key cryptographic primitives in privacy preserving identity management. Bassel holds several yers of experience in DLT and permissionless blockchain development, having previously worked in an academic capacity for the Concordium blockchain project.

Kourosh Marjani Rasmussen

Kourosh is Associate Professor at the Technical University of Denmark. His background is in Data Science, with a specialization in mathematical optimization and a Financial Engineering. Kourosh was part of the team starting the specialization in Financial Engineering at DTU back in 2010 - a program he is still running today. He teaches a course in optimal asset allocation and supervise several students at different levels every year.

Kurt Nielsen

Kurt is Associate Professor at the Section for Production, Markets and Policy at UCPH. Kurts work emphasises operational research, productivity analysis, decision theory, economics of information security, mechanism design with emphasis on Auction theory.

Mohsen Pourpouneh

Mohsen Pourpouneh is writing a Postdoc with the Department of Food and Resource Economics at UCPH. His work emphasises formal verification of security protocols, model checking and theorem proving.

Past and Present Partnerships

Through the past four years, members of the Financial Transparency Group have worked to establish synergies between academia and industry. Group members and affiliates have lead commercial research projects, industrial PhDs and Post-docs, academic courses, hack-a-thons and events.

Universities

Researchers associated with the Financial Transparency Group represent leading Danish knowledge institutions.

Academic Events

Members of the Financial Transparency Group frequently host multidisciplinary academic and commercial events. As part of several active groups, our members

The Blockchain Summerschool

The Blockchain Summer School is an initiative of the European Blockchain Center run jointly for the fourth year, coordinated by faculty members from IT University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen Business School and University of Copenhagen.

The Nordic Blockchain Summit

The Nordic Blockchain Summit unites decision makers and business leaders from different backgrounds and industries. The events features esteemed speakers looking beyond the hype, discussing opportunities and challenges that arise through industrial applications of Blockchain technology.

FinTech Symposium

As part of the Copenhagen FinTech week, the FinTech Symposium attracts top fintech researchers pursuing groundbreaking research with direct implications for industry. The most recent symposium emphasized secure next-generation blockchain technology, featuring Turing Award winners and industry leaders working within real-world applications of blockchain technology.

Coursework

Members of the Financial Transparency Group host year round courses challenging students to pursue key academic and commmercial issues in the digital asset infrastructure.

Selected Publications

Members of the Financial Transparency Group publish frequently in leading journals and conference proceedings. In most cases, the results of our research is open-sourced and disseminated publically amongst our network industry leaders and academics. Below is a list of selected publications produced by group members since 2016.

  • Ross, O., Jensen, J., and Asheim, T. 2019. “Assets under Tokenization: Can Blockchain Technology Improve Post-Trade Processing?,” in Fortieth International Conference on Information Systems, Munich 2019.
  • Parra-Moyano, J., Thoroddsen, T., and Ross, O. 2019. “Optimised and Dynamic KYC System Based on Blockchain Technology,” International Journal of Blockchains and Cryptocurrencies (1:1), Inderscience Publishers (IEL), pp. 85–106.
  • Hopf, S., Loebbecke, C., and Avital, M. 2018. “Blockchain Technology Impacting Property Rights and Transaction Cost Regimes,” in Twenty-Fourth Americas Conference on Information Systems, New Orleans, 2018.
  • Avital, M. 2018. “Peer Review: Toward a Blockchain-Enabled Market-Based Ecosystem,” Communications of the Association for Information Systems (42:1), pp. 646–653.
  • Düdder, B., and Ross, O. 2017. “Timber Tracking: Reducing Complexity of Due Diligence by Using Blockchain Technology (Position Paper),” in 2nd Workshop on Managed Complexity.
  • Egelund-Müller, B., Elsman, M., Henglein, F., and Ross, O. 2017. “Automated Execution of Financial Contracts on Blockchains,” Business and Information Systems Engineering (59:6), pp. 457–467.
  • Hertzog, E., Benartzi, Guy, Benartzi, Galia, and Ross, O. 2017. Continous Liquidity for Tokens through Their Smart Contracts, White Paper for the Bancor Foundation.
  • Beck, R., Avital, M., Rossi, M., and Thatcher, J. B. 2017. “Blockchain Technology in Business and Information Systems Research,” Business and Information Systems Engineering, Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden, pp. 381–384.
  • Avital, M., Hedman, J., Albinsson, L., and Design, M. 2017. “Smart Money: Blockchain-Based Customizable Payments System,” Dagstuhl Reports (7:3), Schloss Dagstuhl–Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik, pp. 104–106.
  • Avital, M., Beck, R., King, J. L., Rossi, M., and Teigland, R. 2016. “Jumping on the Blockchain Bandwagon: Lessons of the Past and Outlook to the Future,” in International Conference on Information Systems, ICIS 2016.

Selected Media

The work and impact of the Financial Transparency Group Members is frequently exhibited in global media outlets. Below is a list of selected media from recent years.

  • Blockchain QA: Dr. Omri Ross, Copenhagen University", Forbes, 2018.
    href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/montymunford/2018/05/24/blockchain-qa-dr-omri-ross-copenhagen-university/">
  • Trading Platform Etoro to Buy Danish Blockchain Company Firmo, Bloomberg, 2019
    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-25/trading-platform-etoro-is-said-close-to-buying-denmark-s-firmo
  • Social Investment Platform eToro Acquires Smart Contract Startup Firmo, TechCrunch, 2019
    https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/25/social-investment-platform-etoro-acquires-smart-contract-startup-firmo/