Blockchain
Powering the Internet of Value
This paper is the result of a research project carried out by Labs in EVRY Financial Services during the fall of 2015.
The Blockchain Canon
Design library
59 foundational papers, connected to what changed when they met the world.
110 public design papers. Each record is a reading: the mechanism, the assumptions, the trade-offs, and what changed after the text. Bitcoin, Ethereum, Stellar, Ripple, Corda, Tether and the other historic PDFs stay at their original paths. The research corpus is the rights and citation layer. It does not replace these readings and it does not republish the papers.
PrivacyConsensusInteroperabilityScalingMarketsCredit and stable valueData and agentsStorage and networksConfidential compute
Privacy
CryptoNote · 2013 · Design paper
CryptoNote v 2.0
The public design paper behind unlinkable payments. Monero adopted the construction and then replaced pieces of it. The historic library only has a third-party review of CryptoNote, not this document.
Zerocoin · 2013 · Design paper
Zerocoin: Anonymous Distributed E-Cash from Bitcoin
A 2013 proposal to add an anonymity layer on top of Bitcoin by burning a coin into a commitment and later redeeming a different coin with a zero-knowledge proof of membership.
Zerocash · 2014 · Design paper
Zerocash: Decentralized Anonymous Payments from Bitcoin
The 2014 paper that showed how a payment ledger can hide sender, receiver and amount, while still letting the network check that coins were not created or double-spent. Zcash is an implementation of this line of work, not a co-author of the paper.
Monero · 2016 · Design paper
Ring Confidential Transactions
The research note Monero used to hide amounts, not just the signer. It extends ring signatures so a spender can prove a balance inside a ring without publishing the values.
Mimblewimble · 2016 · Design paper
Mimblewimble
A short 2016 note on a ledger that stores confidential transactions and can delete spent history. Grin and Beam are later implementations. The note itself is the primary text.
Confidential Transactions · 2015 · Design paper
Confidential Transactions
Hide the amounts on a Bitcoin-style transaction with Pedersen commitments, and use range proofs so a commitment cannot stand for a negative number. The graph of who paid whom stays visible.
Bulletproofs · 2018 · Design paper
Bulletproofs: Short Proofs for Confidential Transactions and More
Range proofs whose size grows logarithmically, with no trusted setup. They made confidential amounts practical to verify. They are not, by themselves, a private payment system.
Groth16 · 2016 · Design paper
On the Size of Pairing-based Non-interactive Arguments
A pairing-based argument in three group elements. The proofs are tiny and cheap to verify. Each circuit needs its own setup, and a leaked setup can forge proofs.
PLONK · 2019 · Design paper
PLONK: Permutations over Lagrange-bases for Oecumenical Noninteractive arguments of Knowledge
A SNARK with a universal and updatable structured reference string. One setup can serve many circuits. The proofs are larger than Groth16, and there is still a setup.
Halo · 2019 · Design paper
Halo: Recursive Proof Composition without a Trusted Setup
Recursion for inner-product arguments, without a structured setup. A proof can attest that another proof was checked. That is how a chain can fold a long history into one object. Halo 2 is a later system.
Zexe · 2020 · Design paper
Zexe: Enabling Decentralized Private Computation
A model for private computation over records. Each record has a birth predicate and a death predicate. A transaction proves that some records died and others were born, without showing which, or showing the data.
Nova · 2021 · Design paper
Nova: Recursive Zero-Knowledge Arguments from Folding Schemes
Incrementally verifiable computation without putting a SNARK inside a SNARK. A folding scheme compresses two instances of a computation into one instance of the same size. Repeating that fold is the recursion. The paper is about prover cost, not about a chain.
Marlin · 2019 · Design paper
Marlin: Preprocessing zkSNARKs with Universal and Updatable SRS
A preprocessing zkSNARK whose structured reference string is universal and can be updated, rather than baked for one circuit in a ceremony that must be trusted forever. The paper improves on Sonic's costs. It is still a SNARK, with a setup.
FROST · 2020 · Design paper
FROST: Flexible Round-Optimized Schnorr Threshold Signatures
A threshold Schnorr signature: any t of n signers can produce one ordinary-looking signature, and fewer than t cannot. The signing protocol is two rounds, or one if nonces were prepared earlier. The paper is the scheme, not a custody vendor.
MuSig2 · 2020 · Design paper
MuSig2: Simple Two-Round Schnorr Multi-Signatures
n signers, all of them, produce one Schnorr signature that verifies under one aggregated key. Two rounds, and concurrent sessions are in the security claim. This is n-of-n, not a threshold. It is the multi-signature Bitcoin-style schemes reached for.
Taproot · 2020 · Design paper
BIP 341: Taproot: SegWit version 1 spending rules
A Bitcoin spend that can look like a single key, while still hiding a tree of alternative scripts until one of them is used. Schnorr signatures and the key-path spend are the mechanism. Amounts stay public. This is not a privacy coin.
Semaphore · 2020 · Design paper
Semaphore: Zero-Knowledge Signaling on Ethereum
A member of a group proves they are some member, and posts a signal, without showing which member. A nullifier stops the same member signalling twice in the same context. The 2020 proposal is a base layer for voting and similar uses. It is not itself a mixer, and later versions changed the circuits.
Consensus
Cardano · 2017 · Design paper
Ouroboros: A Provably Secure Proof-of-Stake Blockchain Protocol
The academic protocol Cardano's settlement layer is built around. It gives a proof-of-stake chain a stated security argument in a synchronous model, with stake electing slot leaders.
Algorand · 2017 · Design paper
ALGORAND: The Efficient and Democratic Ledger
Micali's ledger design: a proof-of-stake protocol that elects a small, unpredictable committee to certify each block, and replaces participants so a corruptor cannot find them in time.
Avalanche · 2018 · Design paper
Snowflake to Avalanche: A Novel Metastable Consensus Protocol Family
A family of consensus protocols that sample the network repeatedly and tip toward one outcome. The 2018 note was pseudonymous. A later write-up adds named co-authors. Avalanche the network is an implementation, not the sample itself.
Solana · 2018 · Design paper
Solana: A new architecture for a high performance blockchain
Yakovenko's design note for a ledger that encodes the passage of time as a verifiable hash chain, called Proof of History, so that validators spend less effort agreeing on order.
Tendermint · 2014 · Design paper
Tendermint: Consensus without Mining
A practical Byzantine-fault-tolerant state machine for a known validator set, with instant finality on commit. It became the consensus engine under Cosmos SDK chains. The 2014 note is the origin, not the current CometBFT specification.
Tezos · 2014 · Design paper
Tezos — a self-amending crypto-ledger
Goodman's proposal for a ledger whose protocol can be amended by a defined on-ledger process, with stakeholders who bake blocks and who may delegate.
Hedera · 2016 · Design paper
The Swirlds Hashgraph Consensus Algorithm: Fair, Fast, Byzantine Fault Tolerance
Baird's technical report on hashgraph: gossip about gossip, a virtual vote computed from the graph, and a fairness claim about the order of transactions. Hedera is the later public network that uses the algorithm under a governing council.
Nano · 2017 · Design paper
Nano: A Feeless Distributed Cryptocurrency Network
LeMahieu's design, first published as RaiBlocks: each account has its own chain, and the account holder is the only one who can append to it. Value moves by a send block on one chain and a receive block on another.
Zilliqa · 2017 · Design paper
The ZILLIQA Technical Whitepaper
A 2017 design for a sharded chain: a directory service that assigns nodes, shards that process transactions in parallel, and a language proposal aimed at safe-by-construction contracts.
Harmony · 2019 · Design paper
Harmony Technical Whitepaper
A sharded proof-of-stake design that combines a BFT-style consensus inside shards with a randomness scheme for assigning validators, aimed at keeping a single shard from being captured.
MultiversX · 2019 · Design paper
Elrond: A Highly Scalable Public Blockchain via Adaptive State Sharding
The 2019 Elrond paper on adaptive state sharding: shards that hold state, a metachain that notarises results, and a secure proof-of-stake selection of validators. The network later rebranded as MultiversX. The paper remains the design document.
NEAR · 2019 · Design paper
The NEAR White Paper
NEAR's public design paper: a sharded proof-of-stake chain with a single account model, nightshade-style data availability across chunks, and a stated intent that hiding the shards from application authors is part of the product.
Aptos · 2022 · Design paper
The Aptos Blockchain: Safe, Scalable, and Upgradeable Web3 Infrastructure
Aptos Labs' 2022 paper for a Move-based chain that pipelines dissemination, ordering, execution and certification, and that treats protocol upgrades as a first-class feature rather than a hard-fork event.
Sui · 2022 · Design paper
The Sui Smart Contracts Platform
Mysten Labs' platform paper. Assets are Move objects. Operations on objects owned by a single address can finish by consistent broadcast among validators. Shared objects go through consensus. The split is the design.
Diem · 2020 · Historical document
The Diem Blockchain
The technical paper for the Libra, later Diem, payment chain: a permissioned BFT ledger, a Move language for resources, and a reserve-backed currency proposal. The project was wound down in 2022. The paper still matters because Move, and the account model Aptos and Sui started from, was specified here.
Mina · 2020 · Design paper
Coda: Decentralized Cryptocurrency at Scale
The Coda paper, later the Mina protocol: a chain whose certificate is a constant-size succinct proof, so a client can check the state without replaying history. The project renamed from Coda to Mina. The paper keeps the original name.
TON · 2021 · Design paper
The Open Network
Durov's design for a multi-chain system of account-chains gathered into shardchains, with a masterchain that records the others. It began as Telegram's network design and continued as The Open Network after Telegram stepped away from the original launch.
Kadena · 2018 · Design paper
Chainweb: A Proof-of-Work Parallel-Chain Architecture for Massive Throughput
Kadena's public parallel-chain design. Many proof-of-work chains advance together, and each block commits to peer-chain headers, so a confirmation is a braid rather than a single chain. This is not the 2016 private-chain note already in the historic library.
EOSIO · 2018 · Design paper
EOS.IO Technical White Paper
The 2018 technical paper for EOSIO: delegated proof of stake, named block producers, and an operating-system metaphor for accounts, permissions and resource allocation. It is a design document. It is not a description of later governance fights around any one chain that used the software.
Internet Computer · 2018 · Design paper
DFINITY Consensus System
The DFINITY consensus overview: a randomness beacon, a ranking of block proposers, and notarisation so that a chain can come to agreement quickly among a large set. The Internet Computer is the later network built by the DFINITY foundation on this line of research.
PBFT · 1999 · Design paper
Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance
The paper that made a Byzantine quorum practical: a known set of replicas, three phases, and a view change when the leader is useless. Tendermint and HotStuff inherit the shape. Open membership is a different problem.
Bitcoin-NG · 2016 · Design paper
Bitcoin-NG: A Scalable Blockchain Protocol
Separate the rare proof-of-work election from the frequent publication of transactions. Key blocks choose a leader. That leader's microblocks carry the transactions until the next key block.
GHOST · 2015 · Design paper
Secure High-Rate Transaction Processing in Bitcoin
At high block rates the longest chain throws away too much honest work. GHOST follows the heaviest subtree, so blocks off the main tip still count for the fork choice.
PHANTOM · 2018 · Design paper
PHANTOM and GHOSTDAG
A blockDAG protocol that still ends in one linear order. Honest blocks cluster. The parameter k is how wide that cluster may be. Kaspa is a later network in this line, not the paper.
SPECTRE · 2016 · Design paper
SPECTRE: A Fast and Scalable Cryptocurrency Protocol
Blocks form a DAG and vote pairwise on which of two blocks came first. In the common case that vote settles quickly. The paper does not promise a total order of every pair, which is why it is a poor fit for general contracts.
Casper FFG · 2017 · Design paper
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.
HotStuff · 2019 · Design paper
HotStuff: BFT Consensus in the Lens of Blockchain
A three-phase BFT protocol whose communication is linear in the number of replicas, because a leader collects a threshold signature instead of everyone talking to everyone. Diem used a variant. The paper is not that network.
HoneyBadgerBFT · 2016 · Design paper
The Honey Badger of BFT Protocols
An asynchronous atomic broadcast. It does not wait for a timeout to make progress, and threshold encryption stops a leader from reading a batch and then dropping the transactions it dislikes.
Narwhal and Tusk · 2022 · Design paper
Narwhal and Tusk: A DAG-based Mempool and Efficient BFT Consensus
Split the mempool from the consensus. Narwhal is a DAG of certified batches. Tusk picks a leader inside that DAG. Later Sui consensus descends from this split. The paper is not a Sui status report.
Snow White · 2017 · Design paper
Snow White: Robustly Reconfigurable Consensus
A proof-of-stake design in the sleepy model: honest nodes may be offline, and the set of stakeholders can change. It is an academic predecessor, not Cardano and not Ethereum.
Thunderella · 2017 · Design paper
Thunderella: Blockchains with Optimistic Instant Confirmation
A fast path and a slow path. If a large supermajority is honest and an accelerator proposes quickly, transactions confirm at network speed. If not, the protocol falls back to an underlying chain.
Proofs of space · 2015 · Design paper
Proofs of Space
A proof that a machine reserved storage, not that it burned energy on a puzzle. The verifier checks a small challenge. Chia is a later system that pairs this idea with a verifiable delay. The paper is not Chia.
Verifiable delay functions · 2018 · Design paper
Verifiable Delay Functions
A function that forces a wait. Evaluating it takes a set number of sequential steps. Checking the result is quick, and the output is unique. Parallel machines do not make the wait much shorter.
Gasper · 2020 · Design paper
Combining GHOST and Casper
An idealised proof-of-stake protocol that pairs a GHOST-style fork choice with Casper FFG finality. The paper is the design argument for Ethereum's beacon chain, not a status report on a later client or a later outage.
Prism · 2019 · Design paper
Deconstructing the Blockchain to Approach Physical Limits
Bitcoin uses one chain for three jobs: proposing transactions, voting on history, and ordering the result. Prism splits those jobs onto separate block trees so throughput can approach network capacity while confirmation tracks propagation delay.
Streamlet · 2020 · Design paper
Streamlet: Textbook Streamlined Blockchains
A deliberately small consensus protocol: epochs, a leader, a vote, and a rule that three adjacent certified blocks on the same chain become final. The point is to show how little machinery the last few years of BFT designs actually need.
FruitChains · 2016 · Design paper
FruitChains: A Fair Blockchain
Nakamoto consensus can pay a minority coalition more than its share of hash power, which is the selfish-mining observation. FruitChains records transactions in 'fruit' that hang off the chain, and pays out over a window so honest hash power gets roughly honest rewards.
DAG-Rider · 2021 · Design paper
All You Need is DAG
Replicas reliably broadcast proposals into a round-structured DAG. Once the DAG is local, each replica can read a total order off it without another round of consensus messages. The paper is the asynchronous, optimally resilient version of that idea.
Bullshark · 2022 · Design paper
Bullshark: DAG BFT Protocols Made Practical
DAG-Rider is built for asynchrony and pays for it on the common path. Bullshark keeps a DAG and a local commit rule, but adds a fast path for when the network is timely. The paper also writes down a simpler partially synchronous version.
Interoperability
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.
Scaling
Lightning · 2016 · Design paper
The Bitcoin Lightning Network: Scalable Off-Chain Instant Payments
Poon and Dryja's 2016 design for Bitcoin payments that stay off the main chain inside penalty-backed channels, and that route across a network of those channels using hashed timelock contracts.
Plasma · 2017 · Design paper
Plasma: Scalable Autonomous Smart Contracts
A 2017 construction for trees of child chains whose state commitments are posted to a parent chain, with exits so a user can leave if the child operator misbehaves. It is an ancestor of later rollup and validium designs, not a synonym for them.
Arbitrum · 2018 · Design paper
Arbitrum: Scalable, private smart contracts
The 2018 USENIX paper on Arbitrum: a verifier that checks a manager's execution of a virtual machine by bisecting disputes, instead of re-executing every instruction. Offchain Labs' later Nitro stack is a descendant, not this paper line for line.
StarkWare · 2018 · Design paper
Scalable, transparent, and post-quantum secure computational integrity
The STARK paper: proofs of computational integrity that are succinct, do not need a trusted setup, and are argued to resist quantum attackers on the underlying hashes. StarkWare's later systems, including StarkEx and Starknet, are built on this proof system. They are not identical to it.
Celestia · 2019 · Design paper
LazyLedger: A Distributed Data Availability Ledger With Client-Side Smart Contracts
Al-Bassam's LazyLedger paper, the research origin of Celestia. The base layer orders and makes data available. It does not execute application transitions. Clients check availability with sampling, and applications execute on their own.
EigenLayer · 2023 · Design paper
EigenLayer: The Restaking Collective
Eigen Labs' design for letting Ethereum stakers opt in to additional slashing conditions, so new services can rent economic security instead of bootstrapping a new token set from zero.
Polygon · 2019 · Design paper
Matic Network white paper
The 2019 Matic paper for a Plasma-inspired sidechain with a proof-of-stake checkpoint layer posting to Ethereum. Polygon is the later organisation and product family. This page is about the 2019 document, not about every subsequent Polygon stack.
Fraud and data availability proofs · 2018 · Design paper
Fraud and Data Availability Proofs
Light clients can refuse a block if a fraud proof shows it is invalid, but only if the block's data was actually published. The paper shows how erasure coding and sampling let clients check publication without downloading everything.
TrueBit · 2017 · Design paper
A scalable verification solution for blockchains
Pay a solver to run a heavy computation off-chain, and pay a verifier only when they find a lie. An interactive game narrows the lie to one step. A jackpot is there so verifiers show up even when solvers are usually honest.
KZG commitments · 2010 · Design paper
Constant-Size Commitments to Polynomials and Their Applications
Commit to a polynomial and later open it at a point, in constant size, with a pairing. The commitment is binding if the setup's trapdoor stays secret. Modern data-availability schemes use this as a brick. The paper is older than those schemes.
EIP-4844 · 2022 · Design paper
Shard Blob Transactions
A new transaction type carries a blob: a large chunk of data that consensus nodes hold briefly and that the execution layer cannot read byte by byte. Rollups are the intended user. The blob is not cheap forever, and it is not the rollup's proof.
BitVM · 2023 · Design paper
BitVM: Compute Anything on Bitcoin
A way to dispute an arbitrary computation between two Bitcoin parties using hashlocks, timelocks and large Taproot trees, without a new opcode. Honest execution stays off-chain. A false claim can be challenged on-chain. It is not a global virtual machine.
Cairo · 2021 · Design paper
Cairo – a Turing-complete STARK-friendly CPU architecture
A CPU whose every instruction was chosen so that a STARK can prove 'this program ran'. You write a program instead of a new set of polynomial equations for each statement. The paper is the machine, not a network's throughput.
Perun · 2017 · Design paper
Perun: Virtual Payment Hubs over Cryptocurrencies
Lightning routes each payment through the intermediaries. Perun asks those intermediaries to set up a virtual channel and then step out of the individual payments. The paper gives the construction for one hub, on a chain that can run the contracts.
Markets
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.
Credit and stable value
Compound · 2019 · Design paper
Compound: The Money Market Protocol
The 2019 Compound paper: pooled lending markets where suppliers earn a floating rate and borrowers post collateral. Interest rates are a function of utilisation, set in the protocol rather than negotiated bilaterally.
Aave · 2020 · Design paper
Aave Protocol white paper
Aave's v1 protocol paper: pooled lending with stable and variable rates, and loan features such as rate switching and uncollateralised flash loans inside a single transaction. It sits in the same family as Compound, with a different rate and product surface.
Maker · 2017 · Design paper
The Dai Stablecoin System
MakerDAO's 2017 description of Dai: a liability minted against overcollateralised vaults, kept near a dollar target by fees, a collateral auction, and an emergency shutdown. It is the reference design for crypto-collateralised stable value, as distinct from a fiat-backed token.
Terra · 2019 · Failure case
Terra Money: Stability and Adoption
Do Kwon's 2019 paper for a family of fiat-pegged tokens stabilised by an arbitrage relationship with a second, volatile token. It is included because it is a canonical design paper that was not in the historic library. It is included as a failure case, not as a model to ship.
Liquity · 2021 · Design paper
Liquity: Decentralized Borrowing
Borrow a stable-value token against ether, with a one-time fee instead of an interest rate. Troves are liquidated into a stability pool. Redemptions let the token be swapped for the collateral of the weakest trove. The paper does not promise a peg.
crvUSD design · 2022 · Design paper
Curve stablecoin design
A stablecoin lent against volatile collateral, where liquidation is a continuous trade into a special pool rather than a one-shot auction. The paper calls that pool LLAMMA. A peg keeper and a monetary-policy rate sit beside it. Simulations in the paper are not a promise about later losses.
Data and agents
Chainlink · 2017 · Design paper
Chainlink: A Decentralized Oracle Network
The 2017 Chainlink paper: a network of independent nodes that fetch off-chain data, aggregate it, and deliver a signed result on-chain, with a reputation and penalty story around the nodes. It is the reference design for 'the contract needs a fact from outside'.
The Graph · 2020 · Design paper
The Graph: a decentralised query protocol for blockchains
The Graph's protocol paper for indexing chain data. Indexers stake on serving a subgraph. Curators signal which subgraphs matter. Consumers pay for queries. The problem is read access, not consensus.
Augur · 2018 · Design paper
Augur: a Decentralized Oracle and Prediction Market Platform
The Augur paper: prediction markets whose outcomes are reported by token holders, with a dispute ladder that can escalate a contested result. It is both a market design and an oracle design. The historic library already holds Gnosis. Augur is the other canonical public prediction-market paper and was not in that set.
Ocean · 2019 · Design paper
Ocean Protocol: A Decentralized Substrate for AI Data and Services
Ocean's technical paper for publishing, pricing and consuming data services with on-chain access control and off-chain storage. The data does not sit inside the chain. The permission and the payment do.
Bittensor · 2021 · Design paper
Bittensor: A Peer-to-Peer Intelligence Market
Rao's paper for a market in which machine-learning models score each other. Peers rank neighbours, ranks accumulate on a ledger, and an incentive mechanism is specified to resist a naive cartel of mutual high scores. It is a design for pricing intelligence as a commodity, not a benchmark of any particular model.
SingularityNET · 2017 · Design paper
SingularityNET: A Decentralized, Open Market and Network for AIs
Goertzel's 2017 proposal for a marketplace where AI services discover, call and pay each other. The paper is broad on purpose: discovery, reputation, inter-agent calls and a tokenised payment rail, sketched as one network.
ERC-4337 · 2021 · Design paper
Account Abstraction Using Alt Mempool
Smart-contract accounts that propose UserOperations, bundled by a separate mempool, without a change to Ethereum's consensus. Paymasters can sponsor gas. The validation rule lives in the account, which is the point and the risk.
UMA · 2020 · Design paper
UMA Data Verification Mechanism: Adding Economic Guarantees to Blockchain Oracles
An oracle that does not answer every question in real time. It prices the cost of bribing the token holders who would resolve a dispute, and it asks contract designers to keep the profit of a lie below that cost. The draft is an economic argument, not a feed you can read as truth.
Storage and networks
Filecoin · 2017 · Design paper
Filecoin: A Decentralized Storage Network
Protocol Labs' July 2017 paper. Storage is an algorithmic market: clients pay miners to store data, miners prove replication and spacetime, and a retrieval market is specified beside the storage market. The historic library's filecoin.pdf is an earlier, different sketch. This is the 2017 document.
Arweave · 2018 · Design paper
Arweave yellow paper
Arweave's protocol paper for permanent storage: miners store a recall block drawn from the history, an endowment is supposed to prepay storage, and the dataset is content-addressed. The yellow paper is the technical document. Marketing pages are not a substitute.
Helium · 2018 · Design paper
Helium: A Decentralized Wireless Network
The Helium paper for a wireless network built from independently owned hotspots. Coverage is the commodity. Proof-of-coverage is the paper's way of checking that a radio is where it says it is and that it can be heard. Later changes of purpose and token are not this document.
Golem · 2016 · Design paper
The Golem Project: crowdfunding white paper
Golem Factory's 2016 paper for a marketplace of spare computer power. Requestors split tasks. Providers run them. A reputation and payment layer is supposed to make the exchange work without a single render farm. The paper is explicit that it was also a crowdfunding document. This page uses the technical design and ignores the sale.
Livepeer · 2017 · Design paper
Livepeer: a decentralised live video streaming network
Petkanics and Tang's design for live video transcoding as a protocol job. Broadcasters send a stream. Transcoders stake and compete to encode the renditions viewers actually need. It is a specific media market, which is why it is more concrete than a general 'decentralised compute' essay.
Basic Attention Token · 2018 · Design paper
Basic Attention Token: Blockchain Based Digital Advertising
Brave's 2018 paper for an advertising unit that pays publishers and users from a measured attention event inside the browser, rather than from a chain of third-party trackers. The browser is load-bearing. The token is the unit of account in the paper's payment flow.
Confidential compute
Secret Network · 2015 · Design paper
Enigma: Decentralized Computation Platform with Guaranteed Privacy
The 2015 Enigma paper from MIT: private contracts executed over secret-shared data, so nodes compute without seeing the raw inputs. Secret Network is a later project in this lineage, using different machinery. This page is about the Enigma paper, which the historic library does not hold.
Oasis · 2019 · Design paper
Ekiden: A Platform for Confidentiality-Preserving, Trustworthy, and Performant Smart Contracts
The Ekiden paper: smart contracts that execute inside trusted hardware, with the ledger checking attestations rather than re-executing the private code. Oasis Network is the later production system in this line. The paper is the academic statement of the approach.
Already in the historic library
These primary papers were on the original site. Open the archived PDF rather than a second essay.
- Bitcoin
Satoshi Nakamoto, 2008
- Ethereum
Buterin white paper
- Ethereum yellow paper
Wood, EIP-150 revision
- Ripple consensus
Schwartz, Youngs, Britto
- Stellar consensus
Mazières
- Interledger
Thomas and Schwartz
- Pegged sidechains
Back et al.
- Tether
Fiat on a Bitcoin-era chain
- Dash
Duffield and Diaz
- Peercoin
King and Nadal, proof of stake
- Corda
R3 introductory paper
- IOTA Tangle
Popov
- Filecoin, 2014 sketch
Earlier than the 2017 Protocol Labs paper
- Gnosis
Prediction markets
- Sia
Vorick and Champine
- Storj
Wilkinson et al.
- Kadena, 2016
Private-chain note, not Chainweb
Historic library
The original Blockchain Lab PDF index, kept at the same paths. Summaries are the archive blurbs, not new essays.
BlockChain Technology
Beyond Bitcoin
A blockchain is essentially a distributed database of records or public ledger of all transactions or digital events that have been executed and shared among participating parties.
Bitcoin
A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System
A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution.
BlockChain Technology
To banking and financial sector in india
TECHNOLOGY and banking have a long close association. Both have been benefitting immensely by this association.
Blockchain Innovations
With Pegged Sidechains
The blockchain paradigm when coupled with cryptographically-secured transactions has demonstrated its utility through a number of projects, not least Bitcoin.
Ethereum
A secure decentralised generalised transaction ledger
Since the introduction of Bitcoin[Nak09] in 2009, and the multiple computer science and electronic cash innovations it brought, there has been great interest in the potential of decentralised cryptocurrencies.
Ripple Consensus
The Ripple Protocol Consensus Algorithm
While several consensus algorithms exist for the Byzantine Generals Problem, specifically as it pertains to distributed payment systems, many suffer from high latency induced by the requirement that all nodes within the network communicate synchronously
Permacoin
Repurposing Bitcoin Work for Data Preservation
Bitcoin is widely regarded as the first broadly successful ecash system. An oft-cited concern, though, is that mining Bitcoins wastes computational resources.
MultiChain Blockchain
Dr Gideon Greenspan, Founder and CEO, Coin Sciences Ltd
Blockchain’s
Driving the Next Wave of Innovation
Smart contracts with embedded business rules promise not only to reduce transaction costs but to create more agile value chains that enable closer cooperation and enhanced trust across the extended manufacturing ecosystem.
Blockchain
een uitwerking van nieuw denken
Blockchain is de nieuwe belofte in ICT: er gaat geen dag voorbij of er is een congres of er verschijnt een artikel over de technologie. Maar wat is blockchain precies en wat kan de overheid ermee?
Hawk
The Blockchain Model of Cryptography and Privacy-Preserving Smart Contracts
Emerging smart contract systems over decentralized cryptocurrencies allow mutually distrustful parties to transact safely without trusted third parties. I
Veros
White Paper
A cryptocurrency is a medium of exchange, which makes use of cryptography to secure transactions and to control creation of additional currency units.
The Digital Asset Platform
Non-technical White Paper
This paper provides a high level overview of the architecture of the Digital Asset Platform, a common foundation on which financial services applications can be built.I
Dash
A PrivacyCentric CryptoCurrency
A cryptocurrency based on Bitcoin, the work of Satoshi Nakamoto, with various improvements such as a twotier incentivized network, known as the Masternode network. I
Heat Ledger
Heuristically Enhanced Asynchronous Transactions
HEAT Ledger is a self-appointed “Gen 3.0” cryptocurrency platform focusing on resolving the two most pressing pitfalls of the existing 2.0 and 1.0 cryptocurrency server software solutions;
Heat Ledger
Heuristically Enhanced Asynchronous Transactions
HEAT Ledger is a self-appointed “Gen 3.0” cryptocurrency platform focusing on resolving the two most pressing pitfalls of the existing 2.0 and 1.0 cryptocurrency server software solutions;
ChainDB
A Peer-to-Peer Database System
Bitcoin [1] has demonstrated a new approach to securely storing data in the cloud. The Bitcoin database services millions of users around the planet and has thus far shown itself to be essentially invulnerable to attack.
Blockchain Technology
Implications and Opportunities For Professional Engineers
You are hereby granted a non-exclusive limited revocable license to use this National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE) white paper provided full attribution is provided to NSPE
Corda
White papers
A distributed ledger made up of mutually distrusting nodes would allow for a single global database that records the state of deals and obligations between institutions and people
Ethereum
A next generation smart contract
When Satoshi Nakamoto first set the Bitcoin blockchain into motion in January 2009, he was simultaneously introducing two radical and untested concepts.
Blockchain
Opportunities for Health Care
by RJ Krawiec, Dan Housman, Mark White, Mariya Filipova, Florian Quarre, Dan Barr, Allen Nesbitt, Kate Fedosova, Jason Killmeyer, Adam Israel, Lindsay Tsai
Hewlett Packard
Blockchain in the financial services industry
Blockchain is a technology that creates a distributed ledger of transactions on a network that is secure, tamper-proof, and easily accessible.
Stratis
Blockchain Solution
Blockchain or Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) offers a radically different paradigm of storing and managing information online.
Embracing Disruption
Tapping the potential of distributed
DTCC is an industry-owned and governed financial market utility with more than 40 years of experience mitigating risk
#MTFLabs:Blockchain
Whitepaper
In late May of 2016, a diverse group of experts met at #MTFBerlin, to participate in a laboratory in which they would experiment, test ideas and explore how blockchain technology
D+H
Financial Technologies
Heralding a New Era in Financial Services In recent months, hardly a day has passed without news of further initiatives and investments in blockchain
Digital Assets on Public Blockchains
White Paper
Digital asset management is one of promising applications of blockchain technology. Blockchains could provide principal disintermediation between digital asset issuers, application developers and consumers and decouple tasks.
Æternity blockchain
The trustless, decentralized and purely functional oracle machine
— Since the introduction of Ethereum in 2014 there has been great interest in decentralized trustless applications (smart contracts).
Finance and Economics Discussion Series
Divisions of Research & Statistics and Monetary.
Digital innovations in finance, loosely known as fintech, have garnered a great deal of attention across the financial industry.
Uport
A platform for self-sovereign identity.
Uport is a secure, easy-to-use system for self-sovereign identity, built on Ethereum. The uPort technology consists of three main components: smart contracts, developer libraries, and a mobile app.
Tether
Fiat currencies on the Bitcoin blockchain
A digital token backed by fiat currency provides individuals and organizations with a robust and decentralized method of exchanging value while using a familiar accounting unit
Blockfreight
The blockchain for global freight.
April 26th | This day now marks two revolutions in freight, 60 years apart. The first was in 1956 with the launch Malcom McLean’s shipping container introducing.
Blockchain Technologies
A whitepaper discussing.
The healthcare industry suffers from an inability to clearly communicate costs in a timely and easy-to-understand format.
Blockchain
In Capital Markets
The aim of this joint report by Euroclear and Oliver Wyman is to help leaders in capital markets to understand the potential of the technology, lay out the paths for its adoption, and present.
PAR
Productive Asset Record System
An open investment recording system built with intelligent lending and hedge fund administration in mind.
Storj
A Peer-to-Peer Cloud Storage Network
A peer-to-peer cloud storage network implementing client-side encryption would allow users to transfer and share data without reliance on a third party storage provider.
Creditbit
WHITE PAPER
Creditbit is a relatively young cryptocurrency, developed on an independent Bitcoin-like Blockchain on December 2015.
TATA
Blockchain for the Internet of Things
Blockchain has begun to have a signicant inuence in the Internet of Things by enhancing security, empowering the incorporation of an increasing number of devices into the ecosystem.
Finra
Distributed Ledger Technology: Implications of Blockchain for the Securities Industry1
Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) (also known as blockchain technology or distributed database technology) has attracted significant interest and funding in the financial services industry in recent years.
Sia
Simple Decentralized Storage
The authors introduce Sia, a platform for decentralized storage. Sia enables the formation of storage contracts between peers.
DIONS
Whitepaper
The development of modern cryptocurrencies began in 2008 with the publication of an article by Satoshi Nakamoto [1] and Bitcoin release, although it should be noted, some work in this direction was made earlier[2].
Proving Ethereum for the Clearing Use Case
Emerald Performance Testing Technical Paper
The current cross-border clearing and settlement value chain is costly, inefficient, and not transparent.
Gnosis
White paper
Prediction markets are poised to become one of the most disruptive innovations in capital markets and data science since the beginning of the Information Revolution.
Filecoin
A Cryptocurrency Operated File Storage Network
Filecoin is a distributed electronic currency similar to Bitcoin. Unlike Bitcoin’s computation-only proof-of-work, Filecoin’s proof-of-work function includes a proof-of-retrievability component, which requires nodes to prove they store a particular file.
SWISSCOIN
Whitepaper
January 3, 2009 has marked the beginning of a new era of globalisation and world interconnection: the first Bitcoin transaction1 has occurred.
SWISSCOIN
Whitepaper
January 3, 2009 has marked the beginning of a new era of globalisation and world interconnection: the first Bitcoin transaction1 has occurred.
Open-Transactions
Secure Contracts between Untrusted Parties
A low-trust notary could replace conventional transaction servers and would allow users to gain access to safe, fast, inexpensive, off-chain transactions with increased functionality.
WINGS
White Paper
WINGS is a blockchain platform that seeds and nurtures a community dedicated to the launching, backing and promotion of new projects proposals through a fluid organizational model referred to as a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO).
Fab City
Locally productive, globally connected self-sufcient cities
More than 200 years since the Industrial Revolution, global urbanisation keeps accelerating. United Nations projections indicate that 75% of the human population will be living in cities by 2050.
PWC
Blockchain – an opportunity for energy producers and consumers?
Blockchain is a special technology for peer-to-peer transaction platforms that uses decentralised storage to record all transaction data.
Teambrella
A PeertoPeer Insurance System
Most insurance services are currently both inefficient and nontransparent. We propose a way to solve these issues by implementing a system that provides peertopeer insurance.
Plutus
White Paper
The Plutus Mobile Application enables a user to make contactless Bitcoin payments at any merchant with a Near Field Communication (NFC) enabled checkout terminal.
Taas
Token-as-a-Service
TaaS introduces an innovation business model that allows investeros to capitalize on the rise of blockchain markets without dealing with hurdles. risk and technical barriers.
An Introduction to Bitcoin and Blockchain Technology
Whitepaper
Bitcoin technology began to enter the public discourse in 2011, largely through its association as an anonymous payment system used on illicit and underground websites.
Decent
Whitepaper
True innovation is rare, especially in the world of media. More difficult is to determine which aspect of media thrives for development most. Majority of mainstream media do not truly innovate as they are happy with their current business models.
Chronicled
Open Registry for IoT
With a blockchain-hosted Open Registry for Internet of Things, we envision a future where everything—from your car, to a work of art, to the glass of wine you drink at the end of a long day—can have a unique and unforgeable identity, life, and history on the Internet.
PPCoin
Peer-to-Peer Crypto-Currency with Proof-of-Stake
A peer-to-peer crypto-currency design derived from Satoshi Nakamoto’s Bitcoin. Proof-of-stake replaces proof-of-work to provide most of the network security.
A Securities Law Framework for Blockchain Tokens
White Paper
A blockchain token is a digital token created on a blockchain as part of a decentralized softwareprotocol.
Kadena
The first scalable, high performance private blockchain
This paper introduces Kadena, the first private/permissioned blockchain technology to achieve high performance at scale. K
Capgemini
Leveraging Blockchain to Transform Insurance Industry
‘The revolution will not be televised. It will be cryptographically time stamped on the block chain.
JPX
Applicability of Distributed Ledger Technology to Capital Market Infrastructure
This material was compiled based on the results of research and studies by directors, officers, and/or employees of Japan Exchange Group, Inc.,
Equibit
A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Equity System
The registration, transfer, clearing and settlement of equities represents a significant part of economic activity currently underserved by modern technological innovation.
ETHEREUM
A SECURE DECENTRALISED GENERALISED TRANSACTION LEDGER EIP-150 REVISION
The blockchain paradigm when coupled with cryptographically-secured transactions has demonstrated its utility through a number of projects, not least Bitcoin.
ShoCard
White Paper
With the use of a mobile app and facial recognition, travelers need to be only identified once and can be quickly verified by nonaffiliated airlines, airports or other agencies.
The Stellar Consensus Protoco
A Federated Model for Internet-level Consensus
Financial infrastructure is currently a mess of closed systems. Gaps between these systems mean that transaction costs are high [Provost 2013] and money moves slowly across political and geographic boundaries [Banning-Lover 2015; CGAP 2008].
A Protocol for Interledger Payments
White paper
We present a protocol for payments across payment systems. It enables secure transfers between ledgers and allows anyone with accounts on two ledgers to create a connection between them.
REVIEW OF CRYPTONOTE
White paper
This document is not intended as financial advice; it is one mathematician’s take on the white paper before digging into the code. I’ve learned a lot writing this document.
Blockchain Technology
Possibilities for the U.S.Postal Service
Blockchain technology allows peers to exchange money directly without the need for a traditional financial intermediary, lowering the cost and increasing the speed of transactions.
ETLA
White Paper
In November 2008, a mysterious white paper appeared on the Internet in all quietness. Written under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, the paper described a new method for creating a fully distributed digital currency system by cryptographically
Filament Foundations
White Paper
As more and more devices are connected in the Internet of Things (IoT), an enormous amount of value is waiting to be unlocked.
Tangle
White Paper
In this paper we analyze the technology used as a backbone of iota (a cryptocurrency for Internet-of-Things industry).
Dragonfly Fintech
Blockchain Technology A New Paradigm
A blockchain is a system to share distributed data in a robust and mathematically secure way. Due to the ubiquity of data at the core of many real-world systems, blockchain technology is already revolutionizing data processing in many domains.
Consensys
White Paper
This report hopes to bring the World Government Summit a fresh perspective on the current state of blockchain technology. The report explores how the blockchain will drive positive changes in nearly every area of civic life over the next ten years.
World Economic Forum
White Paper
There is widespread recognition among leaders in most industries that the role of digital technology is rapidly shifting, from being a driver of marginal efficiency to an enabler of fundamental innovation and disruption.
Imf staff discussion note
Virtual Currencies and Beyond: Initial Considerations
New technologies—supported by advances in encryption and network computing—are driving transformational change in the global economy, including in how goods, services and assets are exchanged.
Enabling Blockchain Innovations with Pegged Sidechains
White Paper
Since the introduction of Bitcoin[Nak09] in 2009, and the multiple computer science and electronic cash innovations it brought, there has been great interest in the potential of decentralised cryptocurrencies.
Adel
White Paper
This document and any other Adel documents do not constitute a prospectus of any sort and are not a solicitation for investment.
Fraunhofer
White Paper
The »Industrial Data Space« is a virtual data space using standards and common governance models to facilitate the secure exchange and easy linkage of data in business ecosystems.
Blockchain
DECENTRALIZED TRUST
Entreprenörskapsforum är en oberoende stiftelse och den ledande nätverksorganisationen för att initiera och kommunicera policyrelevant forskning om entreprenörskap, innovationer och småföretag.
ECOMP
(Enhanced Control, Orchestration, Management & Policy) Architecture White Paper
AT&T’s Domain 2.0 (D2) program is focused on leveraging cloud technologies (the AT&T Integrated Cloud – AIC) and network virtualization to offer services while reducing Capital.