Crypto Canon
Foundations
Bitcoin Whitepaper
The one that started it all. Sets the foundation for blockchains, proof of work, cryptoeconomic incentives and more.
Ethereum Whitepaper
Expands upon the original foundation of Bitcoin with the introduction of Smart Contracts and Decentralized Applications.
Fat Protocols
An analysis of value capture in the current ecosystem of the internet and how value capture might shift to the protocol layer with token economics and cryptonetworks.
Money, blockchains and social scalability
Socioeconomic analysis of contemporary market dynamics and introduction of cryptography and axiomatic principles within distributed & trustless cryptonetworks.
WTF is The Blockchain?
An approachable overview of blockchain concepts including hash functions and public and private key cryptography.
Beyond the Bitcoin Bubble
A contemporary and comprehensive overview on a number of crypto concepts framed against their potential implications on the world's population and the fabric of everyday life.
Infrastructure
A Proof of Stake Design Philosophy
Original introduction to proof of stake and some of the main concepts.
Enter the Merkle Forest
Juan Benet, founder of IPFS describes IPLD and the 'Merkle Forest' as well as the component layers that comprise IPFS stack including IPNS, IPLD, multiformats and more.
Blockchain-Anchored Identity – A Gateway to Decentralized Apps and Services
Daniel Buchner (head of Microsoft's Identity Division) discusses how decentralized identity has the potential to vastly improve the way we interact with many services today.
Blockchains don't scale today. But there's hope.
Comprehensive overview of current distributed systems architecture and performance characteristics and proposed improvements.
Explain Delegated Proof of Stake Like I’m 5
High-level overview of the history behind delegated proof-of-stake consensus algorithm as well as references to follow-up materials.
A Universal Resolver for self-sovereign identifiers
An introduction to the Decentralized Identity Foundation's Universal Resolver.
Making Sense of Ethereum’s Layer 2 Scaling Solutions: State Channels, Plasma, and Truebit
Overview of limitations of blockchains, introduction to State Channels, Plasma & Truebit.
A Beginner’s Guide to IPFS
A general overview of the infrastructure behind the Interplanetary File System (IPFS), distributed hash tables and Merkle DAGs.
Blockchain Mining 2.0
Notation capital's overview on proof of stake mining, merkle mining, validation mining, the relevant stakeholders, and the value of investors participating as a service provider in new cryptonetworks.
W3C Decentralized Identifier (DIDs) Spec
The W3C draft spec for verifiable, self-sovereign digital identities. Introduces DID documents, frgments, methods, schemes with references to JSON Linked Data components.
Money
Stablecoins: A Holy Grail in Digital Currency
General overview of benefits of a stablecoin and introduction to Maker project and its algorithmic stablecoin, the Dai.
Maker for Dummies: A Plain English Explanation of the Dai Stablecoin
Overview of the Maker ecosystem and its core concepts, including the Dai, CDPs, and MKR token.
Organizations
The Slow Death of the Firm
A thought piece on how cryptonetworks might cause a shift in the way traditional corporate organizations function through new models of coordination, incentives and value distribution.
Blockchain Governance: Programming our Future
What types of governance systems will emerge as effective solutions for cryptonetworks? What concepts can we apply from traditional governance today and what new concepts are necessary?
Crypto Commons
Historical overview of the contemporary corporation and the potential of cryptonetworks to create new types of coordination mechanisms that are a sort of more efficent (and potentially egalitarian) corporate organization.
Economics
Cryptoasset Valuations
An economic valuation framework as it applies to cryptonetworks. Analysis of concepts such as velocity of asset exchange within a network, monetary supply, pricing and quantity of token resource.
Fat protocols are not an investment thesis
Critique of fat protocols thesis as an oversimplification of actual value accrual dynamics. Exploration of rather variable dynamics of the current protocol ecosystem.
Making Sense of “Cryptoeconomics”
An overview of game theoretic concepts, incentives and coordination within distributed systems with cryptographically verified consensus algorithms.
On Value, Velocity and Monetary Theory
Review of current cryptoasset valuation frameworks and further exploration of velocity and GDP as proxies for overall network value.
Assets
Traditional Asset Tokenization
How does the token economy improve upon the current state of the marketplace? What types of assets are amenable to being tokenized?
The Security Token Thesis
An overview of the benefits of tokenization of traditional assets as security tokens. Review of benefits such as 24/7 markets, fractional ownership, cost reduction, market depth, automated compliance and asset interoperability.
Things to Add
- More mining posts
- More proof of stake, merkle mining, validation mining
- Other emerging consensus algorithms like proof of spacetime
- DAOs and end of the corporation
- Privacy coins
- Oracles
- Prediction markets
- Crypto custody for all types of stakeholders
- Crypto and UX
- Mobile wallets and web3 browsing
- Dapp ecosystem and where we go from here
- Want to add something else? Make a pull request.