Cryptoeconomics Researcher

Our mission is to empower passionate people in the research and development of blockchain interoperability technologies. We support teams building secure, open-source, and decentralized products within the Wormhole ecosystem.

The Role: Cryptoeconomics Researcher

The Wormhole Foundation is looking bring on a talented Researcher with applied and academic experience in economics, particularly within permissionless blockchains and interoperability. Your primary role will be to architect systems and protocols that ensure the efficient operation of our decentralized network facilitating cross-chain messaging — focusing on enhancing decentralization and Wormhole’s trustless ZK roadmap, leveraging research in auction design to regulate transaction spam, exploring recent trends in staking to ensure economic security, designing systems that integrate with new L1/L2s in an efficient and scalable manner. You’ll draw on your extensive knowledge and opinions to explore applications of Wormhole messaging in cross-chain protocol design. Researchers play an active and hands-on role at Wormhole, where they are involved throughout the protocol's lifecycle, from ideation and design conception to guiding engineering teams on testing and execution.

Who you are:

Strong understanding of mechanisms and policies in existing blockchains, with a critical perspective on their strengths and limitations. You should be well-versed in areas such as:

Staking and economic security (including delegation economics, slashing conditions, and stake pools) Fee structures and spam prevention measures Trustlessness and decentralization (including light clients, merkle proofs, and security guarantees of various L1s and rollups) Auction and intent marketplace design

Excellent knowledge of major DeFi primitives, such as AMMs, borrowing/lending, oracles, etc. and strong understanding of the cross-chain value proposition Strong technical communication abilities Strong analytical skills and proficiency in data analysis and visualization tools (e.g. Python, R, or SQL) Enjoy working remotely with a talented global team and ideally based in the Americas or European time zones

  Why this role at Wormhole?

Wormhole is at the forefront of DeFi protocol and cryptographic research You’ll work with leading ecosystem projects (Eigenlayer, Lido, Uniswap, Monad, etc…) You’ll work with close knit team of passionate team members with a strong and supportive community culture You’ll receive a strong compensation package with excellent benefits You’ll work on highly impactful items related Wormhole’s long term growth and success