Cardano's design rests on peer-reviewed research, from the Ouroboros family of proof-of-stake protocols to the on-chain governance model. The papers and specifications below are grouped by development era. For a plain-language account of what they add up to, read how Cardano works.
Foundation
Byron
A period dedicated to building a foundational federated network that enabled the purchase and sale of ada. Blocks were produced by federated nodes running Ouroboros Classic and, from February 2020, Ouroboros BFT.
Papers
Decentralization
Shelley
A period of growth and development occurred for the network, focusing on ensuring greater decentralization. This phase led to enhanced security and a more robust environment, following the transition where the majority of nodes became operated by network participants.
Papers
- Ouroboros Praos: An adaptively-secure, semi-synchronous proof-of-stake blockchain
- Ouroboros Genesis: Composable Proof-of-Stake Blockchains with Dynamic Availability
- Stake-Bleeding Attacks on Proof-of-Stake Blockchains
- Reward Sharing Schemes for Stake Pools
- Account Management in Proof of Stake Ledgers
- Flexible Formality: Practical Experience with Agile Formal Methods
- Coalition-Safe Equilibria with Virtual Payoffs
Smart Contracts
Goguen
The Goguen era introduced smart-contract functionality, enabling the construction of decentralized applications while supporting multifunctional assets, fungible, and non-fungible token standards.
Papers
- The Extended UTXO Model
- UTXOma: UTXO with Multi-Asset Support
- Native Custom Tokens in the Extended UTXO Model
- Functional Blockchain Contracts
- Scripting Smart Contracts for Distributed Ledger Technology
- Marlowe: financial contracts on blockchain
- Marlowe: implementing and analysing financial contracts on blockchain
- Unraveling recursion: compiling an IR with recursion to System F
- System F in Agda, for fun and profit
- Translation Certification for Smart Contracts
Scaling
Basho
An era of optimization, improving the scalability and interoperability of the network. Work from this era includes diffusion pipelining, delivered with the Vasil upgrade, the Hydra layer 2 protocol and partner chains that connect to the main Cardano chain. Layer 2 lists the networks that run today.
Papers
Governance
Voltaire
The era that made Cardano a self-governing system. With CIP-1694, live since the Chang and Plomin upgrades, DReps, stake pool operators and the Constitutional Committee vote on chain on governance actions, from protocol changes to treasury withdrawals, and the rules set which of them vote on which type of action. Ada holders take part by delegating their voting power or becoming a DRep. The governance section explains how it works.