ETHPrague 2026

Everyone at crypto conferences talks about tokenization democratizing finance for the Global South. This talk skips the promises and goes straight to the data.

I will present findings from three interconnected empirical studies conducted as part of my Marie Curie doctoral research at the University of Nicosia, funded by the EU Horizon Europe programme:

1. Localized stablecoins as sovereign liquidity: On-chain transaction data from Sub-Saharan Africa shows how local-currency stablecoins (cNGN, IDRX) function as precursors to broader asset tokenization. What velocity patterns emerge? Where do they break?

2. Credit defaults in tokenized private credit: An analysis of the Tokenized Private Credit Benchmark (TPCB)—a dataset of 2,741 loans across 60 institutional pools, 8 protocols, and 5 blockchains (Ethereum, Polygon, Avalanche, Solana, and Aptos). The data reveals which pools actually perform and introduces the Risk-Return Score (RRS), a new metric for the risk-adjusted evaluation of tokenized lending.

3. Gas cost viability on Ethereum: 50,000 Monte Carlo simulations using 1,096 daily ETH gas price observations (2022–2024) to model the true operational cost of running tokenized investment agents on Ethereum L1. At what point does the cost crossover make blockchain more expensive than traditional finance?

The common thread: Tokenized finance is not a binary "works or doesn't." The data shows specific conditions under which it outperforms traditional mechanisms and where it breaks down. Stablecoins work where banking infrastructure is absent. Tokenized credit pools carry measurable default risk that on-chain transparency only partially mitigates. Furthermore, Ethereum gas costs create a hard ceiling on signal frequency, ultimately determining economic viability.

This is not a product pitch. There is no token. These are peer-reviewed findings submitted to ICIS 2026, ACM Distributed Ledger Technologies, and EuroMed 2026. I will present the data, show the models, and let the audience draw their own conclusions.

About me: I am a Marie Curie Research Fellow (EU Grant No. 101119937) and doctoral candidate at the University of Nicosia, researching asset tokenization for emerging economies. Previously recognized as an MIT "Innovator Under 35," I have presented at Token2049, NFT.NYC, the Bitcoin Conference El Salvador, Imperial College London, and the World Economic Forum. I was awarded first place at the Bank of Cyprus Fintech Hackathon 2024. My work is published in Future Internet (MDPI), ACM SAC, IEEE iMETA, and EMCIS.