Why do I have to read your white paper?
With the release of “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System” 10 years ago, Satoshi Nakamoto introduced the world to uncensorable digital money. What no one knew at the time was that Nakamoto’s 8-page, academic-journal style article would also accidentally established an awful precedent: crypto white papers.
LongHash recently published an article calling for an end to these missives titled “Death to the White Paper.” While traditional white papers have a long history of guiding readers through complex ideas or arguing viewpoints in-depth, they’ve become something far less helpful in the crypto world: long-winded marketing pamphlets filled jargon.
Crypto entrepreneurs have learned that a successful product needs to be accompanied by a white paper. (Indeed, billions have been raised just on the promises written in them.) But current crypto white papers stray far away from the specific explanations of the original Nakomoto doc. Instead, they closely resemble pitch decks instead of technical documents. The goal of these white papers is no longer informing readers but instead is about soliciting investors. The complex details of the crypto project are mostly missing, but the bombardment of users remains, often with 40+ pages of jargon and rehashed mathematical formulas.
It’s fair to argue that these recent white papers are a lot like the monolithic “business plans” of old, where would-be entrepreneurs wrote graph-filled tomes, sent them to venture capitalists, and hoped for a reply. Those are almost entirely a relic of the past, though, as shorter pitch decks delivered in person took over. Now, resources like AngelList move that process increasingly online. In short, fundraising for a startup evolved over time and the same needs to happen in crypto.
Current incentivizes are misaligned. Entrepreneurs are writing white papers to market their ICO to investors instead of to educate users. While those investors might help bootstrap a product, users are the ones that will sustain it. When white papers are written to sell an investment, they often end up promoting unrealistic promises and goals: A study by the University of Pennsylvania researchers found that only 20% of the top 50 grossing ICO codebases match the promises outlined in their white papers.
None of this is to argue against a Nakomoto-style treatise on how a project will work. But when white papers are purely marketing documents masquerading as technical documents they are virtually useless. Entrepreneurs should strive for user experience over everything else. Users do not need to understand the inner workings of a token, they need to know that it works as advertised. Investors and enthusiasts should not refer new users to a project white paper for guidance but instead should help them use the actual product. Unless we stop putting white paper over product, the speculative frenzy will continue and crypto will never reach mainstream adoption.

