Abhimanyu Nag
MITACS Fellow
University of Alberta
I am currently a MITACS Fellow working with Dr. Michael Kouritzin at the Department of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences, University of Alberta to develop innovative technology for educational platforms. I am also an advising Quantitative Research Scientist at Catalysis Labs to develop pricing algorithms for DeFi insurance.
Previously, I used to work in the industry in Financial Risk Management, particularly in Decentralized Finance (DeFi). I started my career at Nethermind as a Data Scientist and most recently I served as Chief Scientist at Chainrisk Labs (Antler-backed), where I led research and advised our clients on DeFi risk parameters, formal verification of DeFi protocols and economic attack prevention. Before coming back to UAlberta, I also had a brief stint at Pantera Capital's hedge fund TanX as Lead Risk Simulations where I was leading the development of quantitative risk models for trading decisions.
My industry research has focused on risk modelling, algorithmic game theory, and economic security in decentralized systems. My current work is in modelling Sybil attacks in competitive markets (see recent paper) and analyzing security properties of decentralized protocols, with a particular interest in secure market design in blockchain transaction fee mechanisms, governance systems, and multi-agent coordination problems in AI.
News
My book chapter in Mathematical Research in Blockchain Economy (MARBLE) 2025 is out now!
"Economic Security of Multiple Shared Security Protocols" has been published in the proceedings of MARBLE 2025 which has been published by Springer Nature. The full chapter can be accessed by clicking on the banner!
Paper Accepted to Financial Cryptography 2026, St. Kitts and Nevis
"On Sybil Proofness in Competitive Combinatorial Exchanges" has been accepted as a poster at Financial Cryptography and Data Security 2025. I will be presenting this work in St. Kitts and Nevis in March 2026!
Why Consensus Insurance Markets Are a Disaster Waiting to Happen
Published analysis revealing how attackers can weaponize insurance policies to slash their attack costs to near-zero while maximizing system-wide damage. Introduced the kamikaze attack model and proved fundamental impossibility results for naive insurance designs. Special thanks to collaborators from Stanford, Columbia, University of Toronto, and Othentic for their insights.
Experience
MITACS Fellow — University of Alberta
Advisor: Dr. Michael Kouritzin
Research in Mathematical Statistics for Education Parameter Estimation under Dr. Michael Kouritzin at the Department of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences.
Risk Management Lead — Pantera Capital's TanX, YODL Exchange
Led risk simulation strategies for Pantera Capital's Hedge Fund TanX and devised CoW order routing algorithm for Dextr (now YODL) Exchange, helping traders make better decisions on the floor.
Chief Scientist — Chainrisk Labs
Led innovation in preventing economic exploits and attacks in decentralized markets at this Antler-backed startup. Developed governance attack prediction on Compound Finance using Multi-Agent Influence Diagrams (presented at ETH Tokyo & Coinfest Bali).
Protocol Economist — HyperspaceAI
Worked on incentive design on EigenLayer and optimal transaction dissemination protocols at this supercomputing L1 turned Distributed AI company.
Junior Data Scientist — Nethermind
Got cited in the Ethereum Yellow Paper (EIP-5133) for accurately predicting ETH's difficulty bomb delay. Conducted stress tests for TwinStake and MEV modeling with MEV-Boost.
Education
University of Alberta
BSc. in Statistics
Advisor: Prof. Arno Berger and Prof. Michael Kouritzin
Duke University
COMPSCI 584: Foundations of Blockchains
Advisor: Invited by Prof Kartik Nayak to audit the course as a guest professional student
Recent Publications
View AllAbhimanyu Nag
“On Sybil Proofness in Competitive Combinatorial Exchange”
Financial Cryptography and Data Security (FC) 2026•December 2025
Abhimanyu Nag, Madhur Prabhakar, Tanuj Behl
“A Coincidence of Wants Mechanism for Swap Trade Execution in Decentralized Exchanges”
arXiv Preprint•July 2025
Talks
MAIDs for Governance Protocols
ETH Tokyo and Coinfest Bali • 2024
I explain how Multi-Agent Influence Diagrams (MAIDs) can be used to formally verify governance protocols at ETH Tokyo 2024
Security and Mechanism Design in DeAI
Proposal Talk at Yale • 2025
First iteration research proposal talk on "Security and Mechanism Design in DeAI" by me at Yale University in 2025.
Code
EIP-5133 Ethereum Difficulty Bomb Prediction
Code to predict block time after difficulty bomb was set off. This work was cited in the Ethereum Yellow Paper (EIP-5133) for accurately predicting ETH's difficulty bomb delay.
Attack Insurance Protocol Simulation
Simulation toolkit for analyzing unattributable faults (UF) in Ethereum PoS consensus and why naive insurance markets fail. Advanced security analysis for proof-of-stake protocols.
Healthcare Insurance Fraud Detection Using Markov Models
Undergraduate thesis (STAT-499) on predicting healthcare insurance fraud using Markov Observation Models. ScotiaBank-funded research project with Dr. Mike Kouritzin.
Statistical Models of Trading Strategies
A collection of statistical models for various trading strategies. Quantitative analysis frameworks for financial markets.
Citadel APAC 2022 Data Open Competition
Competition work for The Spring 2022 APAC Data Open conducted by Citadel and Correlation One.