PPCoin: Peer-to-Peer Crypto-Currency with Proof-of-Stake

King and Nadal's paper is an early proof-of-stake design sitting beside proof of work. The library already names them.

Rights uncertain
Design paper
Historic library path

Record

Authors: King and Nadal
Date: 2012, as commonly cited for this title. Not re-read from the file bytes in this build.
Publisher: The authors
Version: Historic library file.
Document ID: BLC-PDF-0007
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

King and Nadal's paper is an early proof-of-stake design sitting beside proof of work. The library already names them.

It is not Ouroboros. The security argument is not the same object.

Why it is in the corpus

It is the historic file people mean when they say proof of stake started as a paper, not as a slogan.

Where to read

Official source — peercoin.net PDF
Legacy library pathThe old URL stays. It is served from the Internet Archive copy of the previous site.

Legacy path remains. Full text is not republished.

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.

Coin age can be consumed as a substitute for some of the work in block creation.

Assumptions

The stake rule in the paper is the rule. Later networks that say proof of stake are not citing this mechanism unless they say so.

What changed

Ouroboros and later stake protocols replaced the idea with different arguments. See those papers rather than this one if that is what you mean.

Relationships

ConceptProof of stake
Later and differentOuroboros

Cite this record

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

Author–date

King, & Nadal (2012). PPCoin: Peer-to-Peer Crypto-Currency with Proof-of-Stake. The authors. https://www.peercoin.net/assets/paper/peercoin-paper.pdf

BibTeX

@techreport{peercoin2012,
  title = {PPCoin: Peer-to-Peer Crypto-Currency with Proof-of-Stake},
  author = {King and Nadal},
  year = {2012},
  institution = {The authors},
  url = {https://www.peercoin.net/assets/paper/peercoin-paper.pdf},
  note = {Rights status: Rights uncertain. Blockchain Lab record: https://blockchainlab.com/research/corpus/papers/peercoin}
}

RIS

TY  - RPRT
TI  - PPCoin: Peer-to-Peer Crypto-Currency with Proof-of-Stake
AU  - King
AU  - Nadal
PY  - 2012
PB  - The authors
UR  - https://www.peercoin.net/assets/paper/peercoin-paper.pdf
N1  - Rights status: Rights uncertain
ER  -

CSL-JSON

[
  {
    "type": "report",
    "id": "BLC-PDF-0007",
    "title": "PPCoin: Peer-to-Peer Crypto-Currency with Proof-of-Stake",
    "author": [
      {
        "literal": "King"
      },
      {
        "literal": "Nadal"
      }
    ],
    "issued": {
      "date-parts": [
        [
          2012
        ]
      ]
    },
    "publisher": "The authors",
    "URL": "https://www.peercoin.net/assets/paper/peercoin-paper.pdf",
    "note": "Rights status: Rights uncertain. Not a licence to republish the paper."
  }
]

JSON BibTeX file RIS file CSL-JSON

Rights record

Source status: Historic library path
Use status: Legacy path remains. Full text is not republished.
Rights: Rights uncertain
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