{"title":"Decentralized Finance (DeFi) assurance: early evidence","authors":"Thomas Bourveau, Janja Brendel, Jordan Schoenfeld","doi":"10.1007/s11142-024-09834-8","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p>Decentralized finance (DeFi) has emerged to offer traditional financial services such as lending, borrowing, and trading without intermediaries (e.g., banks). DeFi transactions are typically executed using a special digital class of contracts called smart contracts. These contracts are self-executing and hard-coded directly on a blockchain. We observe the emergence of a new class of voluntary audits that evaluate the integrity of these contracts. Using a hand-coded sample of about 8,500 smart contract audit reports, we provide some of the first evidence showing that (1) these audits are pervasive, (2) the audit firm market is composed of new technical audit firms, (3) the scope of these audits can span a variety of contract features, (4) the audit inputs and outputs differ substantively from those of conventional financial audits, and (5) the market reacts positively to the release of these audit reports, suggesting that these reports are value-relevant. These findings highlight the demand for novel assurance services driven by blockchain technology.</p>","PeriodicalId":48120,"journal":{"name":"Review of Accounting Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":4.8000,"publicationDate":"2024-07-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Review of Accounting Studies","FirstCategoryId":"91","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11142-024-09834-8","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"BUSINESS, FINANCE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Decentralized finance (DeFi) has emerged to offer traditional financial services such as lending, borrowing, and trading without intermediaries (e.g., banks). DeFi transactions are typically executed using a special digital class of contracts called smart contracts. These contracts are self-executing and hard-coded directly on a blockchain. We observe the emergence of a new class of voluntary audits that evaluate the integrity of these contracts. Using a hand-coded sample of about 8,500 smart contract audit reports, we provide some of the first evidence showing that (1) these audits are pervasive, (2) the audit firm market is composed of new technical audit firms, (3) the scope of these audits can span a variety of contract features, (4) the audit inputs and outputs differ substantively from those of conventional financial audits, and (5) the market reacts positively to the release of these audit reports, suggesting that these reports are value-relevant. These findings highlight the demand for novel assurance services driven by blockchain technology.
期刊介绍：
Review of Accounting Studies provides an outlet for significant academic research in accounting including theoretical, empirical, and experimental work. The journal is committed to the principle that distinctive scholarship is rigorous. While the editors encourage all forms of research, it must contribute to the discipline of accounting. The Review of Accounting Studies is committed to prompt turnaround on the manuscripts it receives. For the majority of manuscripts the journal will make an accept-reject decision on the first round. Authors will be provided the opportunity to revise accepted manuscripts in response to reviewer and editor comments; however, discretion over such manuscripts resides principally with the authors. An editorial revise and resubmit decision is reserved for new submissions which are not acceptable in their current version, but for which the editor sees a clear path of changes which would make the manuscript publishable. Officially cited as: Rev Account Stud
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