Research corpus ConsensusBLC-PAPER-0003

Ouroboros: A Provably Secure Proof-of-Stake Blockchain Protocol

Ouroboros elects slot leaders from stake and states the security argument in a synchronous model. Cardano is a later network. A staking rate is not part of the paper.

Official external source only
Design paper
Official source

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Record

Authors: Aggelos Kiayias, Alexander Russell, Bernardo David, Roman Oliynykov
Date: IACR ePrint 2016/889. A proceedings version followed. This record is the ePrint, not a later Cardano paper.
Publisher: IACR ePrint
Version: ePrint 2016/889. Praos, Genesis, and later network software are other documents.
Document ID: BLC-PAPER-0003
DOI: None recorded
Last reviewed: 1 October 2026
Licence: No licence recorded. Rights status under review.

No hash is published. This build does not store those PDF bytes, so a checksum would be invented. Where a legacy path exists, it points at the Internet Archive copy of the old library.

Direct answer

Ouroboros elects slot leaders from stake and states the security argument in a synchronous model. Cardano is a later network. A staking rate is not part of the paper.

The long reading — mechanism, assumptions, and what the proof does not say — stays on the study page. This record is the rights, citation, and graph layer.

Why it is in the corpus

It is the paper to cite when a venture says proof of stake as if the phrase were a proof.
The honest-majority assumption is over stake, not hash power, and the paper says the network model it uses.

Where to read

Official source — IACR ePrint 2016/889
Blockchain Lab study, the canonical readingOriginal commentary. Not a transcription of the paper.

Metadata and commentary only. Read the PDF at IACR.

Full text

Full text is not published on this page. Public availability is not a licence to republish a document. Blockchain Lab has not recorded a licence that permits an HTML transcription, a training set, or a retrieval corpus of the paper. Text on this page is Blockchain Lab's own wording, or a pointer to a study that is also Blockchain Lab's wording.

Claims and assumptions

Blockchain Lab's reading of what the document is doing. Not a quotation and not the source text.

Time is split into epochs and slots. Stake elects a leader for a slot.
The security claim is conditional on the stated model, including synchrony.

Assumptions

Honest majority of stake.
A synchronous network, as the paper states. Later Ouroboros papers change the model.

What changed

Praos, Genesis, and the live Cardano clients are not this ePrint. The study page keeps that separation.

Relationships

Canonical readingOuroboros study
ProposesProof of stake
Protocol profileOuroboros profile
What changedWhat changed after the paper
CompareStake and work
Different ruleBitcoin

Construct with this

A pattern link for people designing a system. It is not a claim that this paper is a product specification, and it is not permission to copy anyone’s code.

Validator operations — not a yield

Cite this record

These citations point at the source document. They are not a licence to copy it.

Author–date

Kiayias, A., Russell, A., David, B., & Oliynykov, R. (2017). Ouroboros: A Provably Secure Proof-of-Stake Blockchain Protocol. IACR ePrint. https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/889.pdf

BibTeX

@techreport{ouroboros2017,
  title = {Ouroboros: A Provably Secure Proof-of-Stake Blockchain Protocol},
  author = {Aggelos Kiayias, Alexander Russell, Bernardo David, Roman Oliynykov},
  year = {2017},
  institution = {IACR ePrint},
  url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/889.pdf},
  note = {Rights status: Official external source only. Blockchain Lab record: https://blockchainlab.com/research/corpus/papers/ouroboros}
}

RIS

TY  - RPRT
TI  - Ouroboros: A Provably Secure Proof-of-Stake Blockchain Protocol
AU  - Aggelos Kiayias
AU  - Alexander Russell
AU  - Bernardo David
AU  - Roman Oliynykov
PY  - 2017
PB  - IACR ePrint
UR  - https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/889.pdf
N1  - Rights status: Official external source only
ER  -

CSL-JSON

[
  {
    "type": "report",
    "id": "BLC-PAPER-0003",
    "title": "Ouroboros: A Provably Secure Proof-of-Stake Blockchain Protocol",
    "author": [
      {
        "literal": "Aggelos Kiayias"
      },
      {
        "literal": "Alexander Russell"
      },
      {
        "literal": "Bernardo David"
      },
      {
        "literal": "Roman Oliynykov"
      }
    ],
    "issued": {
      "date-parts": [
        [
          2017
        ]
      ]
    },
    "publisher": "IACR ePrint",
    "URL": "https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/889.pdf",
    "note": "Rights status: Official external source only. Not a licence to republish the paper."
  }
]

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Rights record

Source status: Official source
Use status: Metadata and commentary only. Read the PDF at IACR.
Rights: Official external source only
Training and retrieval: Not permitted from this site. There is no rights-cleared full text to retrieve or to train on.

Rights and licensing Corrections