Founding papers
59 coins’ whitepapers and technical papers, each linked where the project or its authors published it, never a copy from somewhere else. A paper says what a project set out to build, often years before what it does now; each coin page says what it does today. Ask search for any of them: “solana whitepaper”.
Aave
Protocol Whitepaper V1.0 Whitepaper · 2020
Aave V3 Technical Paper Technical paper · 2022 · Emilio Frangella, Lasse Herskind
Arbitrum
Arbitrum: Scalable, private smart contracts Research paper · 2018 · Harry Kalodner, Steven Goldfeder, Xiaoqi Chen, S. Matthew Weinberg, Edward W. Felten
Arbitrum Nitro: A Second-Generation Optimistic Rollup Whitepaper · Harry Ng, Aman Sanghi, Tristan Wilson, Valeria Yermakova, Tsahi Zidenberg
Artificial Superintelligence Alliance
Fetch.ai: An Architecture for Modern Multi-Agent Systems Research paper · 2026 · Michael Wooldridge, Attila Bagoly, Jonathan J. Ward, Emanuele La Malfa, Gabriel P. Licks
Arweave
Arweave: A Protocol for Economically Sustainable Information Permanence Yellow paper · Sam Williams, Viktor Diordiiev, Lev Berman, India Raybould, Ivan Uemlianin
Avalanche
Scalable and Probabilistic Leaderless BFT Consensus through Metastability Research paper · 2020 · Team Rocket, Maofan Yin, Kevin Sekniqi, Robbert van Renesse, Emin Gün Sirer
Basic Attention
Basic Attention Token (BAT) Whitepaper · 2021 · Brave Software
Bitcoin
Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System Whitepaper · 2008 · Satoshi Nakamoto
Bittensor
Bittensor: A Peer-to-Peer Intelligence Market Whitepaper · Yuma Rao
Canton
Canton Network: A Network of Networks for Smart Contract Applications Whitepaper · 2024 · Digital Asset
Canton Coin: A Canton-Network-native payment application Whitepaper · 2024 · Digital Asset
Cardano
Ouroboros: A Provably Secure Proof-of-Stake Blockchain Protocol Research paper · 2016 · Aggelos Kiayias, Alexander Russell, Bernardo David, Roman Oliynykov
Celestia
LazyLedger: A Distributed Data Availability Ledger With Client-Side Smart Contracts Research paper · 2019 · Mustafa Al-Bassam
Chainlink
ChainLink: A Decentralized Oracle Network Whitepaper · 2017 · Steve Ellis, Ari Juels, Sergey Nazarov
Chainlink 2.0: Next Steps in the Evolution of Decentralized Oracle Networks Whitepaper · 2021 · Lorenz Breidenbach, Christian Cachin, Benedict Chan, Alex Coventry, Steve Ellis, Ari Juels, Farinaz Koushanfar, Andrew Miller, Brendan Magauran, Daniel Moroz, Sergey Nazarov, Alexandru Topliceanu, Florian Tramèr, Fan Zhang
Compound
Compound: The Money Market Protocol Whitepaper · 2018 · Robert Leshner, Geoffrey Hayes
Cosmos Hub
Cosmos: A Network of Distributed Ledgers Whitepaper · Jae Kwon, Ethan Buchman
Curve DAO
StableSwap - efficient mechanism for Stablecoin liquidity Whitepaper · 2019 · Michael Egorov
Dai
The Sky Protocol: Sky's Multi-Collateral Dai (MCD) System Whitepaper · 2020
Dash
Dash: A Payments-Focused Cryptocurrency Whitepaper · Evan Duffield, Daniel Diaz
EigenCloud (prev. EigenLayer)
EigenLayer: The Restaking Collective Whitepaper · EigenLayer Team
EIGEN: The Universal Intersubjective Work Token Whitepaper · Eigen Labs Team
Ethereum
Ethereum: A Next-Generation Smart Contract and Decentralized Application Platform Whitepaper · 2014 · Vitalik Buterin
Ethereum: A Secure Decentralised Generalised Transaction Ledger Yellow paper · 2025 · Gavin Wood
Filecoin
Filecoin: A Decentralized Storage Network Whitepaper · 2017 · Protocol Labs
Flare
The Flare network and FLR token Whitepaper · 2022 · Flare Networks
Gnosis
Gnosis Whitepaper Whitepaper · 2017
Golem
The Golem Project Whitepaper · 2016
Gram (prev. Toncoin)
The Open Network Whitepaper · 2021 · Nikolai Durov
Hedera
The Swirlds Hashgraph Consensus Algorithm: Fair, Fast, Byzantine Fault Tolerance Technical paper · 2016 · Leemon Baird
Hedera: A Public Hashgraph Network & Governing Council Whitepaper · 2020 · Leemon Baird, Mance Harmon, Paul Madsen
Horizen
Horizen Protocol Whitepaper · 2025 · Horizen Labs Research
Injective
INJ: A Programmable Token Economy for Deflationary Acceleration Research paper · 2024 · Injective Research
Internet Computer
The Internet Computer for Geeks Whitepaper · 2023 · The DFINITY Team
IOTA
IOTA Technical and Tokenomics Whitepaper Whitepaper · 2025 · IOTA Foundation
Kaspa
PHANTOM and GHOSTDAG: A Scalable Generalization of Nakamoto Consensus Research paper · 2018 · Yonatan Sompolinsky, Shai Wyborski, Aviv Zohar
LayerZero
LayerZero Whitepaper · 2023 · Ryan Zarick, Bryan Pellegrino, Isaac Zhang, Thomas Kim, Caleb Banister
Lido DAO
Lido V3 Technical Paper Technical paper · 2025 · Eugene Pshenichnyy, Eugene Mamin, Max Merkulov, Alexey Potapkin
Mina Protocol
Mina: Decentralized Cryptocurrency at Scale Technical paper · 2020 · Joseph Bonneau, Izaak Meckler, Vanishree Rao, Evan Shapiro
Monero
CryptoNote v 2.0 Whitepaper · 2013 · Nicolas van Saberhagen
Ring Confidential Transactions Research paper · 2016 · Shen Noether, Adam Mackenzie, Monero Core Team
Morpho
Morpho Blue Whitepaper Whitepaper · 2023 · Mathis Gontier Delaunay, Paul Frambot, Quentin Garchery, Matthieu Lesbre
NEAR Protocol
Nightshade: Near Protocol Sharding Design Whitepaper · 2019 · Alex Skidanov, Illia Polosukhin
Pendle
A study on AMMs for trading fixed yield and Pendle V2's Principal Token AMM Technical paper · 2022 · Vu Nguyen
Pi Network
Pi Whitepaper Whitepaper · 2019
POL (ex-MATIC)
POL: One token for all Polygon chains Whitepaper · Mihailo Bjelic, Sandeep Nailwal, Amit Chaudhary, Wenxuan Deng
Polkadot
Polkadot: Vision for a Heterogeneous Multi-chain Framework Whitepaper · 2016 · Gavin Wood
Overview of Polkadot and its Design Considerations Research paper · 2020 · Alistair Stewart, Gavin Wood
Pyth Network
Pyth Network: A First-Party Financial Oracle Whitepaper · 2023 · Pyth Data Association
Render
Render Network Whitepaper Whitepaper · 2023
Sei
Sei: The Layer 1 for Trading Whitepaper · Sei Labs
Solana
Solana: A new architecture for a high performance blockchain v0.8.13 Whitepaper · Anatoly Yakovenko
Starknet
Scalable, transparent, and post-quantum secure computational integrity Research paper · 2018 · Eli Ben-Sasson, Iddo Bentov, Yinon Horesh, Michael Riabzev
Stellar
The Stellar Consensus Protocol: A Federated Model for Internet-level Consensus Whitepaper · 2016 · David Mazières
Sui
The Sui Smart Contracts Platform Whitepaper · The MystenLabs Team
Tezos
Tezos -- a self-amending crypto-ledger White paper Whitepaper · 2014 · L.M Goodman
The Graph
The Graph: A Decentralized Query Protocol for Blockchains Whitepaper · 2018 · Yaniv Tal, Brandon Ramirez, Jannis Pohlmann
TRON
Advanced Decentralized Blockchain Platform Whitepaper Version: 2.0 Whitepaper · 2018
Uniswap
Uniswap v2 Core Whitepaper · 2020 · Hayden Adams, Noah Zinsmeister, Dan Robinson
Uniswap v3 Core Whitepaper · 2021 · Hayden Adams, Noah Zinsmeister, Moody Salem, River Keefer, Dan Robinson
VeChain
VeChain Whitepaper 2.0 Whitepaper · 2019 · VeChain Foundation
Worldcoin
World Whitepapers Whitepaper · 2026
XRP
The Ripple Protocol Consensus Algorithm Whitepaper · 2014 · David Schwartz, Noah Youngs, Arthur Britto
Analysis of the XRP Ledger Consensus Protocol Research paper · 2018 · Brad Chase, Ethan MacBrough
Zcash
Zcash Protocol Specification Technical paper · 2026 · Daira-Emma Hopwood, Sean Bowe, Taylor Hornby, Nathan Wilcox
Looked for, and none of their own
Many stablecoins, exchange tokens and memecoins never published a paper. We looked on each project’s own site and code repository; a copy found elsewhere cannot be checked against the project, so we link none.
Links go to the project’s own copy, checked on the day shown in search. A broken or wrong link? Tell us and we reply within two business days.