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Today, local financial institutions are responsible for submitting compliance reporting data to the supervisory authorities. This is commonly referred to as the ‘push model’. The increasing complexity of reporting obligations often results in delayed reporting which delivers a fragmented and incomplete macroeconomic overview of the financial sector. Working with a group of nine representatives from industry and regulatory authorities, we employ the design science research methodology (DSR) in the design of an artefact, enabling the automated collection and enrichment of transactional data from DLT ledgers. Our findings demonstrate how the adoption of DLT in the financial sector will facilitate the automation of compliance reporting through a ‘pull-model’, in which regulators can access compliance data in near real-time and stage aggregate macroeconomic risk exposures for the eurozone. The findings contribute practical insights to the discourse on design-driven research on DLT and blockchain technology.

While previously a nascent theoretical construct, decentralized autonomous organizations (DAO) have grown rapidly in recent years. DAOs typically emerge around the management of decentralized financial applications (DeFi) and thus benefit from the rapid growth of innovation in this sector. In response, global regulators increasingly voice the intent to regulate these activities. This may impose an excessive compliance burden on DAOs, unless they are deemed sufficiently decentralized to be regulated. Yet, decentralization is an abstract concept with scarce legal precedence. We investigate dimensions of decentralization through thematic analysis, combining extant literature with a series of expert interviews. We propose a definition of “sufficient decentralization” and present a general framework for the assessment of decentralization. We derive five dimensions for the assessment of decentralization in DAOs: Token-weighted voting, Infrastructure, Governance, Escalation and Reputation (TIGER). We present a discretionary sample application of the framework and five propositions on the future regulation and supervision of DAOs. We contribute new practical insights on the topic of compliance and decentralized organizations to the growing discourse on the application of blockchain technology in information systems (IS) and management disciplines.

Decentralized financial applications (DeFi) are a new breed of consumer-facing financial applications composed as smart contracts, deployed on permissionless blockchain technologies. In this article, we situate the DeFi concept in the theoretical context of permissionless blockchain technology and provide a taxonomical overview of agents, incentives and risks. We examine the key market categories and use-cases for DeFi applications today and identify four key risk groups for potential stakeholders contemplating the advantages of decentralized financial applications. We contribute novel insights into a rapidly emerging field, with far-reaching implications for the financial services.