Crypto Economist (Blockchain DeFi)

About Acala

Acala’s mission is to build and nurture the autonomous financial infrastructure of the decentralized web. Delivering on this mission will bring more financial accessibility, opportunity, and prosperity to everyone on the planet through a new, open financial system.

Our core project is the Acala Network itself, which we expect to become the de facto DeFi parachain and stablecoin of the Polkadot ecosystem. Polkadot provides the underlying trust primitives to our parachain, upon which we’ve built our suite of financial primitives including; Multi-collateralized Stablecoin; Trustless Staking Derivatives, and Unified Decentralized Exchange. These primitives will be used by us and other teams to power open DeFi innovations, and burn away all need for the parasitic intermediaries that inhabit almost every conventional trust-based financial system.

We have secured our support from eminent backers like Polychain, Coinbase Venture, Pantera and many more. We’re still preparing Acala’s parachain launch, so there’s no better time to join our mission and be a part of the future that we’re building. Because whoever you are, we’re building it for you 🚀

About the role

As a Crypto Economist your role will focus on mathematical groundings of the Acala & Karura DeFi platforms, and their primitives. These primitives are; A trustless staking derivative (liquid DOT); A multi-collateralized stablecoin backed by cross-chain assets (aUSD); And an AMM DEX – all with micro gas fees that can be paid in any token.

You’ll be working closely with our Auckland-based founders on the ‘Cryptoeconomics’ of our entire platform, and also with our decentralized Engineering Team of 10+. You’ll need to bring a data-driven Economic mindset to the technical domain of a substrate-based blockchain ecosystem, in this case - Polkadot. Your objective will be to Implement the past century of lessons learned from monetary economics to the future of our DeFi applications.

Our ideal candidate will be a classically-trained Mathematical Economist who has already spent some time working on Ethereum-based blockchain research, whether commercially successful or not. But at minimum as an Engineering-centric startup we need a technically-fluent Economist with a mature interest in decentralized applications and the general concept behind Ethereum and smart contracts. If you’re willing to attempt a short evaluation exercise for us, geared toward Blockchain Economics, then we want to hear from you.

What you’ll do

• Design DeFi economic models for blockchain solutions
• Develop token economics such as coins in circulation, soft/hard cap, burn rate, etc.
• Implement the past century of lessons learned from monetary economics into the future of our DeFi applications
• Work closely with our Founders & Engineering Team(s), to identify and answer economics-related questions
• Communicate findings clearly and concisely, and collaborate on the development of educational material

What it takes

• Masters or PhD in Applied Mathematics, Statistical Economics, or similar
• Familiarity with crypto-economic infrastructure such as exchanges, wallets, etc.
• Ability to design token-economic models balancing security and opportunity for real-world applications
• An entrepreneurial mindset with the ability to succeed in a fast-paced environment
• Deep understanding of and passion for decentralized applications
• Alignment with our core values: communication, positivity, continuous learning, and efficient execution

More Information

• Series A statement by CEO Ruitao Su
• Web3 Grant statement by COO Bette Chen
• Coinbase investment statement by Growth VP Dan Reecer
• Get started! Try out our Testnet for yourself

Our Team

Working across New Zealand, the USA & China, our team has emerged from our shared desire for a fairer and more inclusive financial system - in direct contrast to the clear shortcomings of the current institutions that run the world. We’re just people like you, but we’re some of the leading blockchain innovators, Substrate and Rust developers, full-stack dApp developers and economists.

Our Values

The community we’re building is shaped by our values and fuelled by the needs of all humans:

• Inclusion, Care, Trust, and Respect
• Empowerment
• Guidance and Support
• Friendship, Community, Real Relationships

We’re building Acala based on a core set of values we believe are in line with the tenets of web3:

• True decentralization
• Less Trust, More Truth
• Integrity
• Accountability
• Empowering individuals with more autonomy

What We Have Achieved

Acala was founded in 2019 as an early Web3 Foundation grant recipient, and is an ecosystem and education partner of W3F and Polkadot. We have delivered 3 successful live testnet candidates acquiring 14,000 new accounts and 140,000 transactions within the first 3 weeks. And we expect to be among the first to launch on both Kusama and Polkadot in 2021. Stay tuned!

For more information on this position, our employment conditions, or anything Acala related not linked above, get in touch with our Auckland-based Talent Manager: [email protected].