Decentralized Finance (DeFi) applications introduce novel financial instruments replicating and extending traditional ones through blockchain-based smart contracts. Among these applications, DeFi derivatives protocols enable the creation and trading of decentralized derivative instruments whose value depends on underlying cryptoassets, indices, or other reference variables. Despite their growing significance, however, they remain relatively understudied compared to other DeFi protocols, such as lending protocols and decentralized exchanges. This paper systematically analyzes DeFi derivatives protocols, categorized into perpetuals, options, and synthetics, with the aim of comparing their instrument structures, protocol mechanisms, operational dynamics, and economic agents. We provide a formal characterization of the main classes of decentralized derivative instruments and develop a protocol-agnostic framework that connects instrument-level specifications, market-state variables, and protocol-level mechanisms. We complement the analytical framework with numerical simulations that evaluate how derivative positions evolve under varying economic conditions, including changes in underlying asset prices, volatility, protocol-specific fees, and leverage. Overall, this study provides a structured analytical framework for understanding and comparing the design and functioning of decentralized finance derivatives protocols.

翻译：去中心化金融（DeFi）应用引入了新型金融工具，通过基于区块链的智能合约复制并扩展了传统金融工具。在这些应用中，DeFi衍生品协议使得创建和交易去中心化衍生品成为可能，这些衍生品的价值取决于底层加密资产、指数或其他参考变量。尽管其重要性日益增长，但与借贷协议和去中心化交易所等其他DeFi协议相比，这类协议的研究仍相对不足。本文系统分析了DeFi衍生品协议，将其分类为永续合约、期权和合成资产，旨在比较它们的工具结构、协议机制、操作动态和经济参与者。我们对主要类别的去中心化衍生品工具进行了形式化描述，并开发了一种与协议无关的框架，该框架连接了工具级别规范、市场状态变量和协议级别机制。我们通过数值模拟补充了分析框架，评估了在不同经济条件下（包括底层资产价格变化、波动率、协议特定费用和杠杆）衍生品头寸的演变。总体而言，本研究提供了一个结构化的分析框架，用于理解和比较去中心化金融衍生品协议的设计与运作。