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

2025-08-04

AI Summary

Stablecoin research has long suffered from disciplinary fragmentation and the absence of standardized evaluation criteria. Method: This study establishes the first unified taxonomy integrating economics, law, and computer science; proposes a multi-stakeholder performance evaluation framework—addressing issuers, regulators, and users—and develops a reproducible, open-source benchmarking pipeline. Leveraging interdisciplinary literature synthesis, qualitative and quantitative analysis, and empirical modeling grounded in real-world asset tokenization cases, it for the first time rigorously links stablecoin mechanism design to digital transformation of the real economy. Contribution/Results: The work delivers a systematic design taxonomy, a reusable evaluation toolkit, and a publicly available dataset—providing both theoretical foundations and practical blueprints for building trustworthy, inclusive, and transparent programmable monetary infrastructure.

Technology Category

• Game Theory and Economic Paradigms: Mechanism Design
• Multiagent Systems: Mechanism Design
• Philosophy and Ethics of AI: Safety, Robustness & Trustworthiness

Application Category

• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Economic aspects of blockchain and cryptocurrencies
• Security and Privacy: Data transparency and provenance
• Web Mining and Content Analysis: Web data provenance, reliability, and authenticity

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.

Problem

• Develops a unified taxonomy for stablecoin design and evaluation
• Creates stakeholder-focused performance metrics for stablecoin systems
• Demonstrates stablecoins' role in real-world asset tokenization case

Innovation

• Multi-method research design for stablecoin analysis
• Open-source benchmarking pipeline for performance evaluation
• Case study on Real World Asset tokenization application