Protocol papers
Interoperability papers.
A bridge, a hub, or a shared protocol. The risk is usually the key or the committee that stands between the two chains, not the diagram.
How to read this shelf
Each card opens a study. The study is a reading of a public paper, not the paper and not a description of today's network. Status is a design paper unless the record says historical or failure case.
How to read this page
Research status is named on the page. Primary sources are linked. This is a mechanism and operating note, not investment suitability, legal advice, a security guarantee or an implementation certificate.
Polkadot · 2016 · Design paper
Polkadot: Vision for a heterogeneous multi-chain framework
Wood's 2016 vision paper: a relay chain that provides shared security and a queue of cross-chain messages, with parachains that keep their own state transition. It is a vision paper. The live protocol has a specification of its own.
Cosmos · 2016 · Design paper
Cosmos: A Network of Distributed Ledgers
The Cosmos paper: independent zones running a BFT consensus, connected by a hub, speaking a packet protocol that later became IBC. Unlike Polkadot's shared-security vision, zones here are sovereign. They choose their own validator sets.
Atomic swaps · 2018 · Design paper
Atomic Cross-Chain Swaps
A swap across ledgers where either every transfer completes or none does, using hash locks and time locks. There is no custodian in the paper. A party can still walk away and leave the other waiting.
Sprites · 2017 · Design paper
Sprites and State Channels
State channels whose disputes do not have to hop one channel at a time. A global preimage manager lets a payment resolve in constant time on-chain. Lightning did not adopt this design as its production path.
IBC · 2020 · Design paper
The Interblockchain Communication Protocol
Two chains verify each other with light clients. A relayer carries packets and proofs. The relayer is not trusted to tell the truth. It is trusted to bother showing up. Security is the security of both chains.
Payment channels · 2013 · Design paper
Bitcoin Payment Channels
Two parties lock coins in a shared output and exchange updated transactions that are not broadcast. Only the last state, or a dispute, hits the chain.
Eltoo · 2018 · Design paper
eltoo: A Simplified Update Mechanism for Lightning
Eltoo replaces penalties with a sequence of state numbers. A later state can spend an earlier one. Nothing is confiscated. The latest number wins if it is published in time.
Channel factories · 2018 · Design paper
Scalable Funding of Bitcoin Micropayment Channel Networks
A factory is a shared on-chain output that several parties can use to allocate many channels off-chain, so the chain sees the factory and not every channel.
BIP 68 · 2015 · Design paper
Relative lock-time using consensus-enforced sequence numbers
BIP 68, Relative lock-time using consensus-enforced sequence numbers. Relative lock-time (RLT) consensus-enforced semantics of the sequence number field to enable a signed transaction input to remain invalid for a defined period of time after confirmation of its corresponding outpoint.
BIP 347 · 2023 · Design paper
OP_CAT in Tapscript
BIP 347, OP_CAT in Tapscript. OP_CAT as a tapscript opcode which allows the concatenation of two values on the stack.
EIP 152 · 2016 · Design paper
Add BLAKE2 compression function `F` precompile
EIP 152, Add BLAKE2 compression function `F` precompile. This EIP will enable the BLAKE2b hash function and other higher-round 64-bit BLAKE2 variants to run cheaply on the EVM, allowing easier interoperability between Ethereum and Zcash as well as other Equihash-based PoW coins.
EIP 4788 · 2022 · Design paper
Beacon block root in the EVM
EIP 4788, Beacon block root in the EVM. Commit to the hash tree root of each beacon chain block in the corresponding execution payload header.
ERC 1328 · 2018 · Design paper
WalletConnect URI Format
ERC 1328, WalletConnect URI Format. This standard defines how the data to connect some application and a wallet can be encoded with a URI.
ERC 7786 · 2024 · Design paper
Cross-Chain Messaging Gateway
ERC 7786, Cross-Chain Messaging Gateway. This proposal describes an interface, and the corresponding workflow, for smart contracts to send arbitrary data through cross-chain messaging protocols.
ERC 7943 · 2025 · Design paper
uRWA - Universal Real World Asset Interface
ERC 7943, uRWA - Universal Real World Asset Interface. The Universal RWA (uRWA) standard, a set of interfaces for tokenized Real World Assets (RWAs) such as securities, real estate, commodities, or other physical/financial assets on the blockchain.
BIP 197 · 2019 · Design paper
Hashed Time-Locked Collateral Contract
BIP 197, Hashed Time-Locked Collateral Contract. A script for generalized debt agreement contract based on Hashed Time-Lock Contract (BIP 199) transactions according to the Atomic Loans specification (https://arxiv.org/pdf/1901.05117.pdf).
BIP 300 · 2017 · Design paper
Hashrate Escrows (Consensus layer)
BIP 300, Hashrate Escrows (Consensus layer). BIP-300 enables a new type of L2, where "withdrawals" (the L2-to-L1 txns) are governed by proof-of-work -- instead of a federation or fixed set of pubkeys.
BIP 326 · 2021 · Design paper
Anti-fee-sniping in taproot transactions
BIP 326, Anti-fee-sniping in taproot transactions. This document proposes a certain type of wallet behaviour which uses BIP341 taproot[1].