Research corpus InteroperabilityBLC-STUDY-0026

Polkadot: Vision for a heterogeneous multi-chain framework

Wood's 2016 vision paper: a relay chain that provides shared security and a queue of cross-chain messages, with parachains that keep their own state transition. It is a vision paper. The live protocol has a specification of its own.

Official external source only
Design paper
Official source

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Record

Authors: Gavin Wood
Date: 2016
Publisher: Gavin Wood
Version: Source cited by the 2016 study. The study is the reading. This page does not add a second essay.
Document ID: BLC-STUDY-0026
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 — Web3 Foundation white 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 readingPolkadot study
Related paperCosmos
Related paperNEAR
Related paperKadena

Cite this record

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

Author–date

Wood, G. (2016). Polkadot: Vision for a heterogeneous multi-chain framework. Gavin Wood. https://github.com/w3f/polkadot-white-paper

BibTeX

@techreport{polkadot2016,
  title = {Polkadot: Vision for a heterogeneous multi-chain framework},
  author = {Gavin Wood},
  year = {2016},
  institution = {Gavin Wood},
  url = {https://github.com/w3f/polkadot-white-paper},
  note = {Rights status: Official external source only. Blockchain Lab record: https://blockchainlab.com/research/corpus/papers/polkadot}
}

RIS

TY  - RPRT
TI  - Polkadot: Vision for a heterogeneous multi-chain framework
AU  - Gavin Wood
PY  - 2016
PB  - Gavin Wood
UR  - https://github.com/w3f/polkadot-white-paper
N1  - Rights status: Official external source only
ER  -

CSL-JSON

[
  {
    "type": "report",
    "id": "BLC-STUDY-0026",
    "title": "Polkadot: Vision for a heterogeneous multi-chain framework",
    "author": [
      {
        "literal": "Gavin Wood"
      }
    ],
    "issued": {
      "date-parts": [
        [
          2016
        ]
      ]
    },
    "publisher": "Gavin Wood",
    "URL": "https://github.com/w3f/polkadot-white-paper",
    "note": "Rights status: Official external source only. Not a licence to republish the paper."
  }
]

JSON BibTeX file RIS file CSL-JSON

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