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.

翻译：2022年5月，一次明显的投机攻击随后引发市场恐慌，导致当时最流行的稳定币之一UST骤然崩盘。然而，UST并非历史上唯一脱锚的稳定币。设计具有弹性的长期稳定币因此成为一项艰巨挑战。为深入审视现有稳定币设计方案并最终构建更稳健的系统，我们需要理解波动性产生的原因。本文提出一个博弈论模型，旨在帮助识别稳定币为何会遭遇脱锚。该模型揭示，稳定币的价格均衡状态取决于其架构设计及波动性最小化机制。此外，我们的理论得到了跨越1年的大量实证数据支持。为此，我们收集了22种稳定币的每日价格数据，以及包括以太坊和Terra在内的五条区块链的链上数据。