Research corpus ScalingBLC-STUDY-0029

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.

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Record

Authors: Joseph Poon and Vitalik Buterin
Date: 2017
Publisher: Joseph Poon and Vitalik Buterin
Version: Source cited by the 2017 study. The study is the reading. This page does not add a second essay.
Document ID: BLC-STUDY-0029
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

Where to read

Official source — plasma.io paper
Blockchain Lab study, the canonical readingOriginal commentary. Not a transcription of the paper.

Metadata and commentary only. The reading is the study page.

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.

What changed

The study separates the text from later network behaviour. This bibliographic page does not repeat that essay.

Relationships

Canonical readingPlasma study
Related paperLightning
Related paperArbitrum
Related paperStarkWare

Cite this record

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

Author–date

Poon, J., & Buterin, V. (2017). Plasma: Scalable Autonomous Smart Contracts. Joseph Poon and Vitalik Buterin. https://plasma.io/plasma.pdf

BibTeX

@techreport{plasma2017,
  title = {Plasma: Scalable Autonomous Smart Contracts},
  author = {Joseph Poon and Vitalik Buterin},
  year = {2017},
  institution = {Joseph Poon and Vitalik Buterin},
  url = {https://plasma.io/plasma.pdf},
  note = {Rights status: Official external source only. Blockchain Lab record: https://blockchainlab.com/research/corpus/papers/plasma}
}

RIS

TY  - RPRT
TI  - Plasma: Scalable Autonomous Smart Contracts
AU  - Joseph Poon
AU  - Vitalik Buterin
PY  - 2017
PB  - Joseph Poon and Vitalik Buterin
UR  - https://plasma.io/plasma.pdf
N1  - Rights status: Official external source only
ER  -

CSL-JSON

[
  {
    "type": "report",
    "id": "BLC-STUDY-0029",
    "title": "Plasma: Scalable Autonomous Smart Contracts",
    "author": [
      {
        "literal": "Joseph Poon"
      },
      {
        "literal": "Vitalik Buterin"
      }
    ],
    "issued": {
      "date-parts": [
        [
          2017
        ]
      ]
    },
    "publisher": "Joseph Poon and Vitalik Buterin",
    "URL": "https://plasma.io/plasma.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. The reading is the study page.
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