The Bank of Canada published a staff discussion document on March 21, analyzing flash loans and their relevance for decision -makers, as well as potential risks.
The study introduced flash loans as a native financial tools of blockchain which allow users to borrow the crypto without publishing a warranty, provided that the loan is reimbursed in a single atomic transaction.
What is notable in the publication is that a personnel discussion document is a study of the personnel ended on the subjects deemed relevant to the Central Bank and is part of the wider mandate of the Bank of Canada to assess emerging technologies relevant to financial stability and the structure of the market.
Large relevance
One of the main dishes of the study was to find the wider relevance of flash loans for political decision -makers.
Jack Mandin, the author of the study and former research assistant at the Banque du Canada, noted that if flash loans are currently confined to blockchain networks, the underlying concept could be extended to tokenized financial infrastructure if similar technical conditions are met.
These concepts included atomic and risk -free loans, which could cause systems capable of supporting atomic transactions and programmable assets.
The study also raised concerns about financial stability. Direct risks may emerge if financial institutions are starting to integrate intelligent contract loans.
In addition, he pointed out that the risk of contagion is plausible when the blockchain -based assets, including those related to the flash loan activity, are integrated into traditional financial products, such as the stock market negotiated funds.
Full data set on the flash loan activity
The document also documented the development and use of flash loans since their creation in 2018 at the beginning of 2025.
Mandin has compiled a new set of data covering nearly 24 million flash loan events and more than 3 billions of dollars in total volume on 11 compatible blockchains of the Ethereum virtual machine (EVM), in particular Ethereum, Arbitrum and Optimism.
The analysis has identified trends in flash loans design, user models and technical implications for DEFI. He also explored three basic flash loans models: basic flash loans, flash swaps and flash mints.
Each design differs in the way in which liquidity is coming and reimbursed, the flash mints offering a practically unlimited borrowing capacity thanks to the emission and combustion on demand.
The study classified the use of flash loans in five main categories. Positive use cases include arbitration, liquidations and liquidity management, while negative use cases involve washing trading and exploits of smart contracts.
Arbitration operations represented more than 75% of all flash loan events, indicating a strong link between the use and efficiency of the decentralized market.
Research also stressed how flash loans facilitated known vulnerabilities in DEFI protocols, including Oracle price attacks and reversal exploits. These problems have caused significant financial losses in some cases.
Consequently, although most of the flash loan activity is concentrated in legitimate financial operations, high -value transactions for unclear purposes suggest the probability of unconvolled or not detected exploits.
