{"document_id":"BLC-PAPER-0002","slug":"ethereum","title":"Ethereum: A Next-Generation Smart Contract and Decentralized Application Platform","authors":"Vitalik Buterin","year":2014,"date_label":"Circulating white paper, 2014. Drafts exist from late 2013. This record follows the historic library file, not the living HTML on ethereum.org.","publisher":"Vitalik Buterin","paper_type":"Design paper","category":"Contracts","topics":["Smart contracts","General-purpose chain"],"source_url":"https://ethereum.org/en/whitepaper/","source_label":"ethereum.org white paper (current HTML, not the historic PDF)","legacy_pdf_path":"/pdf/Ethereum_white_paper-a_next_generation_smart_contract_and_decentralized_application_platform-vitalik-buterin.pdf","sha256":null,"sha256_note":"No hash is published. This build does not store those PDF bytes, so a checksum would be invented. Where a legacy path exists, it points at the Internet Archive copy of the old library.","version":"Historic library PDF of Buterin's white paper. The publisher's current page is HTML and has moved on.","doi":null,"rights_status":"Rights uncertain","source_status":"Publisher's current page, plus a historic library path","use_status":"Read the publisher's page or the legacy PDF. Full text is not republished here.","licence":null,"licence_label":"No licence recorded. Rights status under review.","full_text":null,"full_text_reason":"Full text is not published on this page. Public availability is not a licence to republish a document. Blockchain Lab has not recorded a licence that permits an HTML transcription, a training set, or a retrieval corpus of the paper. Text on this page is Blockchain Lab's own wording, or a pointer to a study that is also Blockchain Lab's wording.","editorial_line":"Buterin's white paper argues that a chain can do more than move a native coin. It can run programs whose results land in shared state.","canonical_url":"https://blockchainlab.com/research/corpus/papers/ethereum","record_url":"https://blockchainlab.com/research/corpus/papers/ethereum","study_url":null,"last_reviewed":"2026-10-01","last_checked":"2026-10-01","relationships":[{"rel":"Distinct document","label":"Yellow paper, EIP-150 revision","href":"/research/corpus/papers/ethereum-yellow-paper"},{"rel":"Starts from","label":"Bitcoin","href":"/research/corpus/papers/bitcoin"},{"rel":"Proposes","label":"Smart contract","href":"/learn/concepts/smart-contract"},{"rel":"Proposes","label":"Virtual machine","href":"/learn/concepts/virtual-machine"},{"rel":"Later scaling readings","label":"Plasma","href":"/whitepaper/plasma"}]}