I reviewed the the whitepapers for the top 20 cryptoassets by market cap based on their practical value for non-researchers
TL;DR:
Different WPs have different motives and agendas. Some are research papers. Some are marketing brochures. Some are blatantly false (*cough* USDT). Most WPs are outdated.
Whitepapers are usually good for answering the question of why the cryptoasset was created. However, they typically aren't the best sources of info. For example, nearly all of these cryptoasset foundations have excellent documentation and knowledgebase sites that are kept updated. Most users should not bother learning from outdated whitepapers when there's a better documentation site.
Disclaimer: There is almost no correlation between the usefulness of a whitepaper (for the typical investor) to how well-designed the cryptoasset is.
Every once awhile, I come across posts or comments suggesting that whitepapers are excellent sources of knowledge about specific cryptoassets. And you get plenty of comments in these posts praising OP's literacy or research despite that the commenters clearly did not bother reading the mentioned WPs. People who claim that Satoshi's whitepaper is a great source of Bitcoin info is an obvious giveaway that they haven't actually studied it, because they should've realized that it's really about the Proof of Work consensus mechanism and only covers a quarter of the features of Bitcoin.
Here's the actual value you'll get out of reading the whitepaper.
Educational value: The rating criteria is entirely based on how much a non-technical university student would learn about the cryptoasset from reading the whitepaper for 30 minutes. Many here don't have the attention span for 1 minute, so I don't think they would have the patience to read 50+ pages of a research paper.
Length: Estimated pages excluding appendixes, references, and non-related info
Date: Date of the latest revision of the whitepaper
| Cryptoasset | Educational value | Length (pages) | Date | Short review |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BTC | C or B+ | 8 | 2008 | Aka "A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System". The name is a misnomer. It's actually a WP for the Proof of Work consensus and barely covers most others aspects of Bitcoin itself. If it were the "PoW WP", I'd give it a B+. Its strength is in its reason for why PoW and Bitcoin were developed. As for the rest of it, it's a bit technical for most readers. And for those of us who are technical, we can spot its flaws. It's slightly outdated on its methodology and underestimates probabilities for 51% attacks, which are now done using withholding attacks. |
| ETH | A- (current), D (original) | 40 | LIVE | Ethereum does have an original WP, but its current form is more like a live Wiki page for Ethereum that's kept updated. This is a bit long, but it covers everything: History of Bitcoin, Ethereum, mining, gas, PoW, scripting, smart contracts, UXTO vs Account transactions, tokenomics. Regardless of whether it counts as a WP, it's excellent info. |
| BNB | D | 7 | Unknown | This isn't a BNB WP. This is a marketing pitch for Binance and only offers brief tokenomics details on BNB. It spends more time talking about the exchange and the Binance team than about the BNB coin. |
| ADA | C- | 42 | 2017 | This is an excellent example of why you shouldn't be getting information from an outdated WP. Instead, you should use the large Cardano Docs website for information. This obviously outdated 2017 paper starts off similar to the ETH WP in discussing its reason d'etre and history. But it eventually dissolves into business and project management jargon. It's a discussion of the Cardano background and foundation instead of info about the design of ADA itself. I feel like this was written for business and legal professionals. |
| USDT | F | 15 | 2016 | The Tether WP says it's backed in a one-to-one ratio with the equivalent amount of fiat currency held in reserve. They have admitted that's not true in their attestations and audits this year. The Omni protocol mentioned in the WP is no longer accurate, and possibly never was. We already know much of it is false. For example: "Tether has a simple and reliable Proof of Reserves implementation and undergoes regular professional audits." Grade: F for False |
| XRP | B | 8 | 2018 | Ripple properly mentions that this document is outdated with a red banner at the top. Nevertheless, it's accurate on its short analysis of BFT and centralized design. |
| SOL | C | 31 | 2018 | Now this is a detailed research paper on the consensus mechanism of Solana. It has a lot of good info, but it leaves out some important aspects like the high hardware requirements for nodes. It's also too technical for 99% of the community to bother reading. |
| DOT | A | 19, 15 | 2018, 2020 | Polkadot has a WP and a "Lightpaper". I wonder if a Biochemist drew the diagrams in the WP, because they totally look like biochemistry diagrams. This is both very technical but also easy to read. I love it. In addition, they have an excellent "Lightpaper" for the non-technical. Win-win! |
| USDC | A- | 22 | This tells you everything you need to know about CENTRE, USDC, network design, and team. The only thing that's missing is the design for its reserve. | |
| DOGE | F | 5 | n/a | I couldn't find the original DOGE WP. It's currently just a github page that links to its official subreddit for more information. It doesn't mention anything about its network or consensus algorithm. |
| LUNA | C | 15 | 2019 | A bit short and quite technical. Just use their documentation. |
| WBTC | A- | 14 | 2019 | Surprisingly easy to read. This is actually end-user documentation that's disguided as a mock research paper. I'll let that count. |
| AVAX | A (Platform), D (others) | 60 | LIVE | There are 4 separate Avalanche WPs written between 2019 and 2020 that serve difference purposes. Well-written and not yet outdated. Aside from the Platform one, they're all quite long and technical. |
| BUSD | D | 7 | Unknown | Uses the same WP as for BNB |
| LTC | C | 4 | 2011 | This is surprisingly concise because everything mentioned is a comparison to Bitcoin. It indirectly describes each part of its design as a comparison to other cryptoassets. So if you don't know already know about the other coins' designs, this WP won't be particularly helpful. |
| LINK | D | 136 | 2021 | I admit I have not studied their updated 2.0 WP in detail. I'm sure it's an excellent paper and documentation, and it's only moderately technical. However, it's a GIGANTIC 136 pages long. There is no way you can cover this paper in 30 minutes. |
| BCH | n/a or B | 8 | 2008 | Edit: BCH actually shares the same whitepaper as Bitcoin. It was designed as a "Peer-to-Peer" electronic cash system in Nakamoto's original vision when its supporters no longer believed that Bitcoin was following the original plan. |
| ALGO | F | 180+ | 2017-2019 | 5 different technical WPs from 2017 to 2019 covering 180+ pages total. The original one is a whopping 72 pages long. You're going to want to use their documentation, not their WP. |
| SHIB | A+ | 22 | 2021 | The biggest joke is that the the biggest joke coin actually has the best whitepaper. It covers so much: Purpose, design, history, tokenomics, staking, incentives, pools, liquidity, future discussion in an easy-to-read document that even layman can understand. Very surprising. |
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