What Drives the (In)stability of a Stablecoin?

In May 2022, an apparent speculative attack, followed by market panic, led to the precipitous downfall of UST, one of the most popular stablecoins at that time. However, UST is not the only stablecoin to have been depegged in the past. Designing resilient and long-term stable coins, therefore, appears to present a hard challenge. To further scrutinize existing stablecoin designs and ultimately lead to more robust systems, we need to understand where volatility emerges. Our work provides a game-theoretical model aiming to help identify why stablecoins suffer from a depeg. This game-theoretical model reveals that stablecoins have different price equilibria depending on the coin’s architecture and mechanism to minimize volatility. Moreover, our theory is supported by extensive empirical data, spanning 1 year. To that end, we collect daily prices for 22 stablecoins and on-chain data from five blockchains including the Ethereum and the Terra blockchain.