Research corpus ConsensusBLC-STUDY-0065

Casper the Friendly Finality Gadget

A finality overlay. Validators cast two rounds of votes so that a chain of checkpoints becomes justified and then final. Equivocation can be slashed. The gadget does not, by itself, propose blocks.

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Record

Authors: Vitalik Buterin and Virgil Griffith
Date: 2017
Publisher: Vitalik Buterin and Virgil Griffith
Version: Source cited by the 2017 study. The study is the reading. This page does not add a second essay.
Document ID: BLC-STUDY-0065
DOI: None recorded
Last reviewed: 1 October 2026
Licence: No licence recorded. Rights status under review.

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Direct answer

A finality overlay. Validators cast two rounds of votes so that a chain of checkpoints becomes justified and then final. Equivocation can be slashed. The gadget does not, by itself, propose blocks.

Where to read

Official source — arXiv:1710.09437
Blockchain Lab study, the canonical readingOriginal commentary. Not a transcription of the paper.

Metadata and commentary only. The reading is the study page.

Full text

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.

What changed

The study separates the text from later network behaviour. This bibliographic page does not repeat that essay.

Relationships

Canonical readingCasper FFG study
Related paperTendermint
Related paperHotStuff
Related paperCardano

Cite this record

These citations point at the source document. They are not a licence to copy it.

Author–date

Buterin, V., & Griffith, V. (2017). Casper the Friendly Finality Gadget. Vitalik Buterin and Virgil Griffith. https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.09437

BibTeX

@techreport{casperffg2017,
  title = {Casper the Friendly Finality Gadget},
  author = {Vitalik Buterin and Virgil Griffith},
  year = {2017},
  institution = {Vitalik Buterin and Virgil Griffith},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.09437},
  note = {Rights status: Official external source only. Blockchain Lab record: https://blockchainlab.com/research/corpus/papers/casper-ffg}
}

RIS

TY  - RPRT
TI  - Casper the Friendly Finality Gadget
AU  - Vitalik Buterin
AU  - Virgil Griffith
PY  - 2017
PB  - Vitalik Buterin and Virgil Griffith
UR  - https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.09437
N1  - Rights status: Official external source only
ER  -

CSL-JSON

[
  {
    "type": "report",
    "id": "BLC-STUDY-0065",
    "title": "Casper the Friendly Finality Gadget",
    "author": [
      {
        "literal": "Vitalik Buterin"
      },
      {
        "literal": "Virgil Griffith"
      }
    ],
    "issued": {
      "date-parts": [
        [
          2017
        ]
      ]
    },
    "publisher": "Vitalik Buterin and Virgil Griffith",
    "URL": "https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.09437",
    "note": "Rights status: Official external source only. Not a licence to republish the paper."
  }
]

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Rights record

Source status: Official source
Use status: Metadata and commentary only. The reading is the study page.
Rights: Official external source only
Training and retrieval: Not permitted from this site. There is no rights-cleared full text to retrieve or to train on.

Rights and licensing Corrections