Protocol papers
Market-structure papers.
These are mechanism papers. A pool, a curve or an order book is not a forecast and not a product recommendation.
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.
Uniswap · 2020 · Design paper
Uniswap v2 Core
The 2020 core paper for Uniswap v2: a constant-product automated market maker, with arbitrary ERC-20 pairs, price accumulators, and a flash-swap callback. It is the clearest short specification of the pool that much of later DeFi either forked or assumed.
Uniswap · 2021 · Design paper
Uniswap v3 Core
The 2021 paper that replaces the uniform reserve curve with concentrated liquidity. A provider chooses a price range. Inside the range their capital acts like a constant-product pool. Outside it, their position is entirely in one asset.
Curve · 2019 · Design paper
StableSwap — efficient mechanism for Stablecoin liquidity
Egorov's 2019 invariant for pools of assets that should trade near parity. The curve is flat around the peg, where most stablecoin trades happen, and bends toward a constant-product tail when the pool is pushed off parity.
Balancer · 2019 · Design paper
Balancer: A non-custodial portfolio manager, liquidity provider, and price sensor
The Balancer paper generalises the two-asset constant-product pool to a weighted basket of several tokens. Traders rebalance the basket. Liquidity providers define target weights. The pool is both an index and a market.
0x · 2017 · Design paper
0x: An open protocol for decentralized exchange on the Ethereum blockchain
The 2017 0x paper: off-chain signed orders, on-chain settlement, and relayers who host order books without taking custody. It is the reference design for 'the book is off-chain, the swap is on-chain'.
Bancor · 2017 · Design paper
Bancor Protocol: Continuous Liquidity and Asynchronous Price Discovery for Tokens through their Smart Contracts
The 2017 Bancor paper on smart tokens that hold reserves of other tokens and quote a continuous price from a reserve ratio. It is an early automated-liquidity design, distinct from Uniswap's later constant-product pools.
THORChain · 2020 · Design paper
THORChain: a decentralised liquidity protocol
THORChain's design for continuous liquidity pools that cross native chains. Nodes bond capital, observe external chains, and sign outbound transactions as a threshold set. It is a liquidity network, not a wrapped-asset bridge run by a single custodian.
Flash Boys 2.0 · 2019 · Design paper
Flash Boys 2.0: Frontrunning, Transaction Reordering, and Consensus Instability in Decentralized Exchanges
A measurement paper. Miners and bots reorder and insert transactions around DEX trades. The authors name miner-extractable value and show priority gas auctions. It is not a trading manual, and it is not a claim that any strategy here is available or profitable now.
Uniswap v4 · 2023 · Design paper
Uniswap v4 Core
One contract holds many pools. Hooks are code that runs before and after swaps and liquidity changes. Flash accounting settles balances at the end of a lock. A hook can change the rules v3 users took for granted.
TWAMM · 2021 · Design paper
The Time-Weighted Average Market Maker
Execute a large order as if it were split into infinitely many tiny trades across an interval, without paying gas for each piece. Settlement is lazy. This is an order schedule, not a price oracle, despite the nearby acronym TWAP.
EIP-1559 · 2019 · Design paper
Fee market change for ETH 1.0 chain
Replace a first-price auction for inclusion with a protocol-quoted base fee that moves with demand, plus a tip to the producer. The base fee is burned. The EIP is a fee-market rule, not a promise that fees will be low.
Transaction fee mechanism design · 2020 · Design paper
Transaction Fee Mechanism Design
A mechanism-design reading of blockchain fees. Roughgarden separates what users pay, what miners keep, and what gets burned, and asks which combinations are incentive-compatible for myopic miners. EIP-1559 is the running example, not a price forecast.
Curve Cryptoswap · 2021 · Design paper
Automatic market-making with dynamic peg
Stableswap concentrates liquidity around a fixed price of one. This paper moves that concentration so it can follow a moving price between volatile assets. The pool reprices itself from its own trades. It does not know the outside world except through those trades.
Discreet log contracts · 2017 · Design paper
Discreet Log Contracts
The oracle publishes a signature on an outcome. Parties use adaptor signatures so the signature that settles the contract also reveals the oracle's secret, without the oracle knowing which contract it served.
Constant function market makers · 2020 · Design paper
Improved Price Oracles: Constant Function Market Makers
A constant-function market maker defines a set of reserves that must stay on a curve. Prices and oracle quality fall out of that curve and of the path traders take.
Yield Space · 2020 · Design paper
The Yield Protocol: On-Chain Lending With Interest Rate Discovery
Yield Space is an invariant between a target asset and a zero-coupon token. The price of the zero-coupon token implies a rate, and the curve is built so that rate behaves like a rate rather than like a spot commodity.
Uniswap v1 · 2018 · Design paper
Uniswap v1
A pool holds ETH and one ERC-20. The product of the reserves is constant. Anyone can trade against the pool or add both assets.
GMX · 2021 · Design paper
GMX: A Decentralised Perpetual Exchange
GMX v1 pools liquidity provider assets into a vault that takes the other side of leveraged trades. Prices come from an oracle. Traders pay fees to the pool.
Everlasting options · 2021 · Design paper
Everlasting Options
An everlasting option is funded so that holding it approximates a rolling option position. The funding payment, not an expiry, keeps the price near the claim.
BIP 174 · 2017 · Design paper
Partially Signed Bitcoin Transactions
A PSBT is a standard container for a transaction, the inputs' previous outputs, and the partial signatures. Roles are creator, updater, signer, combiner, finaliser and extractor.
ERC-20 · 2015 · Design paper
Token Standard
A token contract exposes total supply, balance, transfer, and allowances. Wallets and exchanges can integrate one interface.
ERC-721 · 2018 · Design paper
Non-Fungible Token Standard
Each token id has an owner. Transfer moves that id. An optional metadata URI points at a description. The standard does not say the description is true, or that the object exists off-chain.
ERC-1155 · 2018 · Design paper
Multi Token Standard
One contract holds many ids. Each id can be fungible or not, by how many copies exist. A batch transfer moves several ids in one call. A receiver hook tries to stop tokens being sent to contracts that cannot hold them.
EIP 7514 · 2023 · Design paper
Add Max Epoch Churn Limit
EIP 7514, Add Max Epoch Churn Limit. Update the maximum validator growth rate from an exponential to a linear increase by capping the epoch churn limit.
ERC 600 · 2017 · Design paper
Ethereum purpose allocation for Deterministic Wallets
ERC 600, Ethereum purpose allocation for Deterministic Wallets. A logical hierarchy for deterministic wallets based on BIP32, the purpose scheme defined in BIP43 and this proposed change to BIP43.
ERC 681 · 2017 · Design paper
URL Format for Transaction Requests
ERC 681, URL Format for Transaction Requests. A standard way of representing various transactions, especially payment requests in ether and ERC-20 tokens as URLs.
ERC 777 · 2017 · Design paper
Token Standard
ERC 777, Token Standard. Standard interfaces and behaviors for token contracts.
ERC 1363 · 2018 · Design paper
Payable Token
ERC 1363, Payable Token. Defines a token interface for ERC-20 tokens that supports executing recipient code after transfer or transferFrom, or spender code after approve.
ERC 2309 · 2019 · Design paper
ERC-721 Consecutive Transfer Extension
ERC 2309, ERC-721 Consecutive Transfer Extension. A standardized event emitted when creating/transferring one, or many non-fungible tokens using consecutive token identifiers.
ERC 2981 · 2020 · Design paper
NFT Royalty Standard
ERC 2981, NFT Royalty Standard. A standardized way to retrieve royalty payment information for non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to enable universal support for royalty payments across all NFT marketplaces and ecosystem participants.
ERC 3525 · 2020 · Design paper
Semi-Fungible Token
ERC 3525, Semi-Fungible Token. The set of smart contract interfaces described in this document defines an ERC-721 compatible token standard.
ERC 4400 · 2021 · Design paper
EIP-721 Consumable Extension
ERC 4400, EIP-721 Consumable Extension. This specification defines standard functions outlining a consumer role for instance(s) of EIP-721.
ERC 4907 · 2022 · Design paper
Rental NFT, an Extension of EIP-721
ERC 4907, Rental NFT, an Extension of EIP-721. It proposes an additional role (user) which can be granted to addresses, and a time where the role is automatically revoked (expires).
ERC 4910 · 2022 · Design paper
Royalty Bearing NFTs
ERC 4910, Royalty Bearing NFTs. The proposal directly connects NFTs and royalties in a smart contract architecture extending the ERC-721 standard, with the aim of precluding central authorities from manipulating or circumventing payments to those who are legally entitled to them.
ERC 5023 · 2022 · Design paper
Shareable Non-Fungible Token
ERC 5023, Shareable Non-Fungible Token. This EIP standardizes an interface for non-fungible value-holding shareable tokens.
ERC 5169 · 2022 · Design paper
Client Script URI for Token Contracts
ERC 5169, Client Script URI for Token Contracts. This EIP provides a contract interface adding a scriptURI() function for locating executable scripts associated with the token.
ERC 5521 · 2022 · Design paper
Referable NFT
ERC 5521, Referable NFT. It proposes two referable indicators, referring and referred, and a time-based indicator createdTimestamp.
ERC 5528 · 2022 · Design paper
Refundable Fungible Token
ERC 5528, Refundable Fungible Token. This specification defines a type of escrow service with the following flow: - The seller issues tokens.
ERC 5606 · 2022 · Design paper
Multiverse NFTs
ERC 5606, Multiverse NFTs. This specification defines a minimal interface to create a multiverse NFT standard for digital assets such as wearables and in-game items that, in turn, index the delegate NFTs on each platform where this asset exists.
ERC 5725 · 2022 · Design paper
Transferable Vesting NFT
ERC 5725, Transferable Vesting NFT. A Non-Fungible Token (NFT) standard used to vest tokens (ERC-20 or otherwise) over a vesting release curve.
ERC 5773 · 2022 · Design paper
Context-Dependent Multi-Asset Tokens
ERC 5773, Context-Dependent Multi-Asset Tokens. The Multi-Asset NFT standard allows for the construction of a new primitive: context-dependent output of information per single NFT.
ERC 6105 · 2022 · Design paper
No Intermediary NFT Trading Protocol
ERC 6105, No Intermediary NFT Trading Protocol. A marketplace functionality to ERC-721 to enable non-fungible token trading without relying on an intermediary trading platform.
ERC 6150 · 2022 · Design paper
Hierarchical NFTs
ERC 6150, Hierarchical NFTs. It proposes a multi-layer filesystem-like hierarchical NFTs.
ERC 6220 · 2022 · Design paper
Composable NFTs utilizing Equippable Parts
ERC 6220, Composable NFTs utilizing Equippable Parts. The Composable NFTs utilizing equippable parts standard extends ERC-721 by allowing the NFTs to selectively add parts to themselves via equipping.
ERC 6239 · 2022 · Design paper
Semantic Soulbound Tokens
ERC 6239, Semantic Soulbound Tokens. This proposal extends ERC-721 and ERC-5192 by introducing Resource Description Framework (RDF) triples to Soulbound Tokens' (‘SBTs‘) metadata.
ERC 6454 · 2023 · Design paper
Minimal Transferable NFT detection interface
ERC 6454, Minimal Transferable NFT detection interface. The Minimalistic Transferable interface for Non-Fungible Tokens standard extends ERC-721 by introducing the ability to identify whether an NFT can be transferred or not.
ERC 6909 · 2023 · Design paper
Minimal Multi-Token Interface
ERC 6909, Minimal Multi-Token Interface. The following specifies a multi-token contract as a simplified alternative to the ERC-1155 Multi-Token Standard.
ERC 7007 · 2023 · Design paper
Verifiable AI-Generated Content Token
ERC 7007, Verifiable AI-Generated Content Token. The verifiable AI-generated content (AIGC) non-fungible token (NFT) standard is an extension of the ERC-721 token standard for AIGC.
ERC 7066 · 2023 · Design paper
Lockable Extension for ERC-721
ERC 7066, Lockable Extension for ERC-721. An extension of ERC-721, this standard incorporates locking features into NFTs, allowing for various uses while preventing sale or transfer.
ERC 7208 · 2023 · Design paper
On-Chain Data Containers
ERC 7208, On-Chain Data Containers. A series of interfaces for the abstraction of storage of on-chain data by implementing the logic functions that govern such data on independent smart contracts.
ERC 7401 · 2023 · Design paper
Parent-Governed Non-Fungible Tokens Nesting
ERC 7401, Parent-Governed Non-Fungible Tokens Nesting. ❗️ The Parent-Governed NFT Nesting standard extends ERC-721 by allowing for a new inter-NFT relationship and interaction.
ERC 7409 · 2023 · Design paper
Public Non-Fungible Tokens Emote Repository
ERC 7409, Public Non-Fungible Tokens Emote Repository. ❗️ The Public Non-Fungible Tokens Emote Repository standard provides an enhanced interactive utility for ERC-721 and ERC-1155 by allowing NFTs to be emoted at.
ERC 7439 · 2023 · Design paper
Prevent ticket touting
ERC 7439, Prevent ticket touting. This standard is an extension of ERC-721 and defines standard functions outlining a scope for ticketing agents or event organizers to take preventative actions to stop audiences being exploited in the ticket scalping market and allow customers to resell their tickets via authorized ticket resellers.
ERC 7743 · 2024 · Design paper
Multi-Owner Non-Fungible Tokens (MO-NFT)
ERC 7743, Multi-Owner Non-Fungible Tokens (MO-NFT). A new standard for non-fungible tokens (NFTs) that supports multiple owners.
ERC 7837 · 2024 · Design paper
Diffusive Tokens
ERC 7837, Diffusive Tokens. A standard for a new type of fungible token, called Diffusive Tokens (DIFF).
ERC 7858 · 2024 · Design paper
Expirable NFTs and SBTs
ERC 7858, Expirable NFTs and SBTs. Introduces an extension for ERC-721 Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) and Soulbound Tokens (SBTs) that adds an expiration mechanism, allowing tokens to become invalid after a predefined period.
ERC 8126 · 2026 · Design paper
AI Agent Verification
ERC 8126, AI Agent Verification. A standard interface for verifying AI agents on Ethereum that have been registered via ERC-8004.