Whitepaper
A project's founding technical document — Bitcoin's nine pages set the template; most successors are marketing wearing a lab coat.
A whitepaper lays out a project’s problem, mechanism and design. The genre’s masterpiece is Bitcoin’s — nine pages, published pseudonymously in 2008, describing Proof of Work consensus and solving double-spending; Ethereum’s 2013 paper added programmability and launched the smart contract era.
Reading one critically: does it specify mechanisms (math, incentives, trade-offs) or adjectives (“revolutionary,” “ultra-fast”)? Does token design serve the system or the sale? Are hard problems acknowledged or hand-waved? A paper that survives those questions doesn’t guarantee success — but one that fails them reliably predicts failure.