Top Cryptocurrencies Rated by White Paper Complexity
By: Reza Jafery
Tags: Writing, Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, Ethereum, Bitcoin

Top Cryptocurrencies Rated by White Paper Complexity

Studying the correlation between the readability of white papers and the money raised.

I recently discovered the Hemingway Editor App, and it’s slowly changing how I view “good” writing.

Hemingway’s most popular novels are written in a 4th-6th grade reading level.

If you inspect other genres, you’ll find that as a rule of thumb; writing is more successful the more simple it is. (source)

The Hemingway Editor scores your writing based on how simple it is to understand. Your score reflects the, “lowest education needed to understand your prose”.

They explain why you want to score as low as possible in this excerpt:

Writing that scores at a 15th grade level is not better than writing at an 8th grade level. In fact, a high grade level often means it is confusing and tedious for any reader. Worse, it’s likely filled with jargon. After all, unless you’re writing a textbook (and even then) you don’t want it to sound like a textbook.[source]

Articles from GQ clock in around a 6th grade reading level. Whereas Buzzfeed articles — which are shared more than GQ articles — are at a 3rd grade level.

It makes sense when you think about the fact that only 50% of Americans can read at an 8th grade level. Even more sense when you notice a mere 15–20% of Americans are able to comprehend writing at a 12th grade level.

If we want mass adoption of blockchain technology, we need to make crypto more simple.

Readability vs. Dollars Raised

This made me wonder if there’s any correlation here. Between the readability of White Papers and dollars raised.

What is an ICO White Paper?

A “White Paper” is essentially a consumer facing Business Plan for Blockchain Projects. Most coins will allow potential investors to download their White Paper off their official website. White papers are also one of the first elements of a project you should look at when deciding if it’s a solid investment.

I’m not saying that one ICO is better than another based on their score. There are countless ingredients to the perfect ICO recipe.

Yet, some ICO’s hide behind technical white papers and esoteric terminology. As if they can trick readers out of their pockets with fancy words.

A couple months ago, I embarked on a mission to determine “ICO Launch Best Practices” — ranging from white paper design to token supply. I work with BlockchainWarehouse and a part of what I do is vetting projects that approach us for support. We’re an accelerator for blockchain based projects, so as a crypto nerd it’s a pretty great gig. I get to help companies go from “napkin idea” all the way to their Token Generation Event, and have had the chance to meet some of the most talented individuals I’ve ever come across. Both on my team at BlockchainWarehouse, and with the companies we’ve helped launch.

I wanted to determine quantifiable metrics to help measure the chances of an ICO or Token Sales success, so I could apply them to the companies we work with. Less positively, I was also keen to learn if there was a method to the madness because, if there wasn’t, that might suggest that we are indeed in a bubble.

Let’s see how some of the biggest ICO’s rank with good ole’ Ernest.

To ensure fairness in ranking; I removed all text from the white papers except for prose. No lists, team member names, mathematical equations, or anything that isn’t written in proper sentence structure.

The HemingwayApp Experiment

aka Operation Old Man in the Sea

Bitcoin

Score: 4th Grade Reading Level

Difficulty: 20% of Sentences are hard or very hard to read.

Length: 9 Pages

I understand that Bitcoin never had an Initial Coin Offering (ICO). I’m including it here as a frame of reference. As the father of all cryptocurrency it’s important to remember where we came from.