Protocol papers
Protocol papers, by the problem they tried to solve.
Nine shelves. Each paper keeps its own URL. Historic PDFs that were already on this site stay in the library and are not rewritten as new research.
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.
- Privacy
- Consensus
- Interoperability
- Scaling
- Markets
- Credit and stable value
- Data and agents
- Storage and networks
- Confidential compute
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.