The Blockchain Canon
From the paper, to the mechanism, to what actually happened.
Not a directory of coins. Each record starts from a public paper, names the mechanism, and says what later practice did to it. 21 papers have the full chain. The other studies stay one click away.
- CryptoNoteFull study
2013 · Design paper · Privacy
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.
- ZerocoinFull study
2013 · Design paper · Privacy
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.
- ZerocashFull study
2014 · Design paper · Privacy
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.
- MoneroFull study
2016 · Design paper · Privacy
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.
- MimblewimbleFull study
2016 · Design paper · Privacy
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.
- CardanoFull study
2017 · Design paper · Reach consensus
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.
- AlgorandFull study
2017 · Design paper · Reach consensus
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.
- AvalancheFull study
2018 · Design paper · Reach consensus
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.
- SolanaFull study
2018 · Design paper · Reach consensus
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.
- TendermintFull study
2014 · Design paper · Reach consensus
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.
- TezosFull study
2014 · Design paper · Reach consensus
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.
- HederaFull study
2016 · Design paper · Reach consensus
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.
- NanoFull study
2017 · Design paper · Reach consensus
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.
- ZilliqaFull study
2017 · Design paper · Reach consensus
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.
- HarmonyFull study
2019 · Design paper · Reach consensus
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.
- MultiversXFull study
2019 · Design paper · Reach consensus
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.
- NEARFull study
2019 · Design paper · Reach consensus
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.
- AptosFull study
2022 · Design paper · Reach consensus
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.
- SuiFull study
2022 · Design paper · Reach consensus
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.
- DiemFull study
2020 · Historical document · Reach consensus
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.
- MinaFull study
2020 · Design paper · Reach consensus
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.
- TONFull study
2021 · Design paper · Reach consensus
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.
- KadenaFull study
2018 · Design paper · Reach consensus
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.
- EOSIOFull study
2018 · Design paper · Reach consensus
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 ComputerFull study
2018 · Design paper · Reach consensus
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.
- PolkadotFull study
2016 · Design paper · Connect
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.
- CosmosFull study
2016 · Design paper · Connect
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.
- LightningFull study
2016 · Design paper · Scale
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.
- PlasmaFull study
2017 · Design paper · Scale
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.
- ArbitrumFull study
2018 · Design paper · Scale
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.
- StarkWareFull study
2018 · Design paper · Scale
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.
- CelestiaFull study
2019 · Design paper · Scale
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.
- EigenLayerFull study
2023 · Design paper · Scale
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.
- PolygonFull study
2019 · Design paper · Scale
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.
- UniswapFull study
2020 · Design paper · Move value
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.
- UniswapFull study
2021 · Design paper · Move value
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.
- CurveFull study
2019 · Design paper · Move value
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.
- BalancerFull study
2019 · Design paper · Move value
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.
- 0xFull study
2017 · Design paper · Move value
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'.
- BancorFull study
2017 · Design paper · Move value
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.
- THORChainFull study
2020 · Design paper · Move value
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.
- CompoundFull study
2019 · Design paper · Move value
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.
- AaveFull study
2020 · Design paper · Move value
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.
- MakerFull study
2017 · Design paper · Move value
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.
- TerraFull study
2019 · Failure case · Move value
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.
- ChainlinkFull study
2017 · Design paper · Data
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 GraphFull study
2020 · Design paper · Data
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.
- AugurFull study
2018 · Design paper · Data
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.