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https://github.com/ethereum/yellowpaper

The "Yellow Paper": Ethereum's formal specification
https://github.com/ethereum/yellowpaper

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The "Yellow Paper": Ethereum's formal specification

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README 

        
# Ethereum Yellow Paper



[![License: CC BY-SA 4.0](https://img.shields.io/badge/License-CC%20BY--SA%204.0-lightgrey.svg)](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)

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The Yellow Paper is a formal definition of the Ethereum protocol, originally by Gavin Wood, currently maintained by Andrew Ashikhmin and with contributions from many people around the world.



It is a free culture work, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (CC-BY-SA) Version 4.0.



## Repository Currently Outdated



The Yellow Paper is out of date. It reflects the Ethereum specification up to the [Shanghai](https://github.com/ethereum/execution-specs/blob/master/network-upgrades/mainnet-upgrades/shanghai.md) network upgrade, activated on the Ethereum mainnet at block `17_034_870` (April 2023). 



It does **not** yet contain changes introduced by the Cancun upgrade.



An alternative [Python Execution Layer specification](https://ethereum.github.io/execution-specs/) is actively maintained and up to date. 



## Usage



If you just want to read the paper, the latest version is generally available as a PDF at https://ethereum.github.io/yellowpaper/paper.pdf. If you find that the borders for links block too much text when viewing the PDF in the browser, you can instead download it and open and view it with a PDF viewer application such as Adobe Acrobat or Evince, where the borders are less likely to display over text.



However, if you want to edit the paper, then read on. The paper comes as a single ``latex`` file ``Paper.tex``.  



It is recommended to use an IDE such as [Visual Studio Code](https://code.visualstudio.com/) with the LaTeX Workshop extension, to edit the tex file, and show the PDF.



Another option is to separately edit the `tex` file and build as follows (you'll still need to clone the repo then open the yellowpaper folder):



```

git clone https://github.com/ethereum/yellowpaper.git

cd yellowpaper

./build.sh

```

This will create a PDF version of the Yellow Paper. Following building, you can also use standard `pdflatex` tools for compiling/preview, like http://latex.informatik.uni-halle.de/latex-online/latex.php.



## Tips on editing



You can use [TeX Stack Exchange](https://tex.stackexchange.com/); https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/ (e.g. [Bibliography Management](https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/Bibliography_Management) and [Hyperlinks](https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/Hyperlinks)); and [BibTeX editor](http://truben.no/latex/bibtex/).



## Versions



The previous protocol versions are listed in [BRANCHES.md](./BRANCHES.md).



### Other language versions

- [Chinese](https://github.com/yuange1024/ethereum_yellowpaper) translated by YuanGe and GaoTianlu.

- [French](https://github.com/asseth/yellowpaper) translated by Asseth (checkout to branch 'french' ).

- [Vietnamese](https://github.com/kodyfanz/ethereum_yellowpaper_vn) translated by KodyFanz (checkout to branch 'vietnamese').