Protocol papers
Credit and stable-value papers.
A vault with collateral is a different object from an arbitrage against the system's own token. The shelf says which is which.
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.
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.
b-money · 1998 · Design paper
b-money
Participants broadcast contract offers. Money is created by solving a computational problem, and a collective bookkeeping system tracks balances. A second variant uses a subset of servers.
Morpho · 2023 · Design paper
Morpho Blue: Permissionless Lending
Morpho Blue isolates a market to one loan asset, one collateral asset, one oracle, one LLTV and one rate model. Risk does not cross markets inside the core.
ERC-4626 · 2022 · Design paper
Tokenized Vault Standard
A tokenised vault has deposit, mint, withdraw and redeem, and a defined conversion between the asset and the share. The share is an ERC-20.
Flash loans · 2020 · Design paper
ERC-3156: Flash Loans
A flash lender sends assets to a receiver and requires that the same transaction returns them, plus a fee. If it does not, the transaction reverts. There is no default in the credit sense, because there is no time.
BIP 137 · 2019 · Design paper
Signatures of Messages using Private Keys
BIP 137, Signatures of Messages using Private Keys. This document describes a signature format for signing messages with Bitcoin private keys.
ERC 6059 · 2022 · Design paper
Parent-Governed Nestable Non-Fungible Tokens
ERC 6059, Parent-Governed Nestable Non-Fungible Tokens. The Parent-Governed Nestable NFT standard extends ERC-721 by allowing for a new inter-NFT relationship and interaction.
ERC 6147 · 2022 · Design paper
Guard of NFT/SBT, an Extension of ERC-721
ERC 6147, Guard of NFT/SBT, an Extension of ERC-721. It separates the holding right and transfer right of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and Soulbound Tokens (SBTs) and defines a new role, guard with expires.
ERC 7291 · 2023 · Design paper
Purpose bound money
ERC 7291, Purpose bound money. A Purpose Bound Money (PBM) token is a wrapper around an ERC-1155 token that can be used for a limited activity.
ERC 7528 · 2023 · Design paper
ETH (Native Asset) Address Convention
ERC 7528, ETH (Native Asset) Address Convention. The following standard proposes a convention for using the address 0xeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee in all contexts where an address is used to represent ETH in the same capacity as an ERC-20 token.
ERC 7535 · 2023 · Design paper
Native Asset ERC-4626 Tokenized Vault
ERC 7535, Native Asset ERC-4626 Tokenized Vault. This standard is an extension of the ERC-4626 spec with an identical interface and behavioral overrides for handling Ether or any native asset as the underlying.
ERC 7540 · 2023 · Design paper
Asynchronous ERC-4626 Tokenized Vaults
ERC 7540, Asynchronous ERC-4626 Tokenized Vaults. The following standard extends ERC-4626 by adding support for asynchronous deposit and redemption flows.
ERC 7575 · 2023 · Design paper
Multi-Asset ERC-4626 Vaults
ERC 7575, Multi-Asset ERC-4626 Vaults. The following standard adapts ERC-4626 to support multiple assets or entry points for the same share token.
ERC 8161 · 2025 · Design paper
Transferable Tokenized Vault Requests
ERC 8161, Transferable Tokenized Vault Requests. This standard extends ERC-7540 by adding optional transferability of pending deposit and redeem Requests.
Lido · 2021 · Design paper
Lido: liquid staking for Ethereum validators
Lido's design pools ether with node operators and issues a rebate token, stETH, that is a claim on that pool rather than a second kind of ether.
Rocket Pool · 2021 · Design paper
Rocket Pool: a permissionless Ethereum staking pool
Rocket Pool publishes a staking pool where a node operator posts their own bond beside pooled ether, and the liquid token is a claim on the pool.
Ethena Labs · 2024 · Design paper
USDe: a delta-neutral synthetic dollar design
Ethena publishes USDe as a token backed by a delta-neutral position: collateral hedged with a short derivatives position, not by cash in a bank account described in this note.
Ondo · 2023 · Design paper
Ondo: tokenised fund access
Ondo publishes tokenised access to fund interests. The token is a claim under the documents, not the fund, and not a stablecoin by default.
Sky Protocol · 2024 · Design paper
Sky: the system that succeeded the Dai documents
Sky publishes the later system around USDS and the Sky savings and governance contracts. It is not the 2017 Dai paper, and it does not inherit that paper's parameters.
Spark Protocol · 2023 · Design paper
Spark: a lending market allocated from Sky
Spark publishes a lending market whose balance sheet is allocated, in the docs, from the Sky system, rather than a standalone pool of unrelated deposits only.
Aave GHO · 2023 · Design paper
GHO: a stablecoin minted against Aave collateral
GHO is minted as a debt against collateral posted in Aave, rather than as a receipt for dollars in a bank.
Frax · 2020 · Design paper
Frax: a fractional and fully backed stablecoin design, by the version the docs name
Frax's documents describe a dollar token whose backing the protocol itself changes between collateral and a governance-token component, depending on the version you open.
Euler · 2024 · Design paper
Euler Vault Kit: credit vaults with isolated risk
The Euler Vault Kit publishes lending vaults whose collateral and liability can be isolated per vault, after the earlier monolithic market.
Yearn · 2020 · Design paper
Yearn v2: vaults that allocate deposits to strategies
Yearn publishes vaults: a deposit token is issued against assets that strategies allocate, and the vault's share price moves with those strategies.
Centrifuge · 2021 · Design paper
Centrifuge: pools of real-world assets with tranche tokens
Centrifuge publishes pools that finance assets described off chain, and tranche tokens that take different layers of loss and return.
Maple Finance · 2021 · Design paper
Maple: undercollateralised lending pools with delegates
Maple publishes lending pools where a delegate originates loans that are not fully collateralised on chain, and lenders hold a claim on that pool.
Goldfinch · 2021 · Design paper
Goldfinch: backers, liquidity providers, and off-chain borrowers
Goldfinch publishes a split between backers who assess a borrower and liquidity providers who supply capital to a senior pool.
Marinade · 2021 · Design paper
Marinade: a Solana stake pool
Marinade publishes a stake pool that delegates SOL across validators and issues a liquid token as a claim on that delegated stake.
ether.fi · 2023 · Design paper
ether.fi: a liquid restaking and staking design with operator separation
ether.fi publishes a flow where a staker receives a liquid claim and an operator runs the validator, with the docs drawing a line between who holds which key.
Puffer · 2024 · Design paper
Puffer: Ethereum validators with anti-slashing claims
Puffer publishes a liquid staking design that adds a rule about how validators are run, including a claim that some slashing conditions are reduced by the protocol's constraints.
Compound III · 2022 · Design paper
Compound III: a single-borrow-asset market
Compound III, as documented, is a market with one borrow asset and many collateral assets, rather than the cross-borrow matrix of the earlier white paper.
Liquity V2 · 2024 · Design paper
Liquity V2: user-set rates and batched liquidations
Liquity V2 documents a collateralised debt position where the borrower sets an interest rate and competes for redemption ordering, rather than paying one protocol-wide fee.
Reflexer RAI · 2021 · Design paper
RAI: a reflex index governed by a controller, not a dollar peg
RAI publishes a collateralised token whose target price is set by a controller that reacts to market deviation, rather than by a promise to redeem for one dollar.
Superstate · 2023 · Design paper
Superstate: tokenised fund shares with transfer restrictions
Superstate publishes fund shares as tokens with transfer restrictions, so the chain records a register the fund's documents still control.
Usual protocol · 2024 · Design paper
Usual: a stablecoin claim backed by treasury-style collateral, as the docs describe
Usual publishes a dollar token whose docs say the backing is short-dated sovereign collateral, with a separate governance token. The collateral type is the claim. The yield is not restated here.
Sanctum · 2023 · Design paper
Sanctum: a liquidity layer for Solana stake tokens
Sanctum publishes a liquidity layer so stake-pool tokens can be swapped or used without each waiting out Solana deactivation on its own.
Swell protocol · 2023 · Design paper
Swell: a liquid staking and restaking token
Swell publishes a liquid staking token and, in later docs, a restaking path. The token is a claim on the validators and on any restaking assignment the docs add.
Kelp · 2023 · Design paper
Kelp: a liquid restaking token
Kelp publishes a liquid token that represents a restaked position, so the holder has a claim on assets that are already subject to a restaking slashing condition.
ERC 3156 · 2020 · Design paper
Flash Loans
A desk note on ERC 3156 (Flash Loans). The file's status is Final. The note records the text. It does not measure who runs it.
ERC 3234 · 2021 · Design paper
Batch Flash Loans
A desk note on ERC 3234 (Batch Flash Loans). The file's status is Stagnant. The note records the text. It does not measure who runs it.
ERC 5143 · 2022 · Design paper
Slippage Protection for Tokenized Vault
A desk note on ERC 5143 (Slippage Protection for Tokenized Vault). The file's status is Stagnant. The note records the text. It does not measure who runs it.
ERC 6229 · 2022 · Design paper
Tokenized Vaults with Lock-in Period
A desk note on ERC 6229 (Tokenized Vaults with Lock-in Period). The file's status is Draft. The note records the text. It does not measure who runs it.
ERC 6682 · 2023 · Design paper
NFT Flashloans
A desk note on ERC 6682 (NFT Flashloans). The file's status is Draft. The note records the text. It does not measure who runs it.