Protocol papers
Scaling papers.
Watch the data, the challenge window, or the proof. A header without the body is a different security claim.
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.
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.