Ledger (journal)

• 1. Introduction

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  Ledger holds a specific distinction among academic publications: it was the first peer-reviewed journal built entirely around cryptocurrency and blockchain research. One of its editors, Christopher E. Wilmer, says the journal receives two to four submissions a week, and many of them are weak. "Occasionally we get submissions with no citations," Wilmer has said.

  That admission raises an obvious question: how does a field driven by hype produce scholarship rigorous enough to survive peer review? Who decided that bitcoin and blockchain technology deserved the same scrutiny as physics or economics? And what happens when the people building that scrutiny have day jobs far outside the cryptocurrency world?

• 2. A Forum Conversation

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  On the bitcoin forum bitcointalk.org, managing editors Peter R. Rizun and Christopher E. Wilmer first discussed the idea that became Ledger. Wilmer envisioned it as a place for "people passionate about the technology, to publish their research." He also questioned the reliability of the white papers that had become common during the cryptocurrency boom. Instead, he pushed for a more traditional peer review system.

  A call for papers went out on the 15th of September 2015, with submissions due by the 31st of December that year. The plan slipped, delayed as Rizun and Wilmer worked to formalize how peer review would actually operate. The journal's first issue did not appear until December 2016, more than a year after that original deadline had passed.

• 3. Scope And Standards

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  Papers in Ledger must connect back to cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin. Accepted topics range across mathematics, computer science, engineering, law, economics and philosophy. Wilmer describes the core focus more narrowly: "blockchain technology research."

  Coin Center, a nonprofit organization, funds the journal, and Ledger is published on an open access basis. The University Library System of the University of Pittsburgh publishes Ledger, with the University of Pittsburgh Press serving as cosponsor. The people who built that structure had day jobs far removed from cryptocurrency itself.

• 4. The Editors' Day Jobs

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  Peter R. Rizun works as a physicist and entrepreneur based in Vancouver, Canada.

  Christopher E. Wilmer holds a position as assistant professor in the Chemical and Petroleum Engineering Department within the University of Pittsburgh's Swanson School of Engineering. He is also the author of a book called Bitcoin for Befuddled. Wilmer first used bitcoin to buy honey caramels from a beekeeper.

  The University of Pittsburgh's ties to the currency reached beyond the journal itself. The school later appeared in a documentary called The Rise and Rise of Bitcoin.