SoK: Stablecoins for Digital Transformation -- Design, Metrics, and Application with Real World Asset Tokenization as a Case Study

Paper: arXiv 2508.02403

Authors: Luyao Zhang

Abstract

Stablecoins have become a foundational component of the digital asset ecosystem, with their market capitalization exceeding 230 billion USD as of May 2025. As fiat-referenced and programmable assets, stablecoins provide low-latency, globally interoperable infrastructure for payments, decentralized finance, DeFi, and tokenized commerce. Their accelerated adoption has prompted extensive regulatory engagement, exemplified by the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-assets Regulation, MiCA, the US Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins Act, GENIUS Act, and Hong Kong’s Stablecoins Bill. Despite this momentum, academic research remains fragmented across economics, law, and computer science, lacking a unified framework for design, evaluation, and application. This study addresses that gap through a multi-method research design. First, it synthesizes cross-disciplinary literature to construct a taxonomy of stablecoin systems based on custodial structure, stabilization mechanism, and governance. Second, it develops a performance evaluation framework tailored to diverse stakeholder needs, supported by an open-source benchmarking pipeline to ensure transparency and reproducibility. Third, a case study on Real World Asset tokenization illustrates how stablecoins operate as programmable monetary infrastructure in cross-border digital systems. By integrating conceptual theory with empirical tools, the paper contributes: a unified taxonomy for stablecoin design; a stakeholder-oriented performance evaluation framework; an empirical case linking stablecoins to sectoral transformation; and reproducible methods and datasets to inform future research. These contributions support the development of trusted, inclusive, and transparent digital monetary infrastructure.

Complexity vs Empirical Score

• Math Complexity: 2.5/10
• Empirical Rigor: 8.0/10
• Quadrant: Street Traders — practical and empirical, lighter on theory

Why this score: The paper introduces a single formal equation for stablecoin stability and a conceptual taxonomy, indicating low-to-moderate math complexity. However, it heavily emphasizes an open-source benchmarking pipeline, reproducible datasets, and a case study, demonstrating high empirical rigor with backtest-ready tools and implementation focus.

Research Flowchart

  flowchart TD
  A["Research Goal"] --> B["Multi-Method Synthesis"]
  B --> C["Taxonomy & Framework Design"]
  B --> D["Data Benchmarking"]
  C --> E["Cross-Disciplinary Alignment"]
  D --> F["Performance Evaluation"]
  E --> G["Real World Asset Case Study"]
  F --> G
  G --> H["Key Outcomes"]

Cited References (138)

1. Sok: blockchain decentralization (2022) — link
2. Is decentralized finance actually decentralized? a social network analysis of the aave protocol on the ethereum blockchain — → 2206.08401
3. Understand waiting time in transaction fee mechanism: An interdisciplinary perspective (2023) — link
4. Blockchain network analysis: A comparative study of decentralized banks (2023)
5. Ai ethics on blockchain: Topic analysis on twitter data for blockchain security (2023)
6. Empirical analysis of eip-1559: Transaction fees, waiting times, and consensus security (2022)
7. Dam: A universal dual attention mechanism for multimodal timeseries cryptocurrency trend forecasting (2024)
8. The economics of blockchain governance: Evaluate liquid democracy on the internet computer (2024)

4 of 138 cited works are in the corpus; resolved via arXiv source bundles, Semantic Scholar and OpenAlex. Corpus-wide: 2518 linked papers.