Bitcoin Forum

Question for everyone, what are the signs of a good whitepaper and also signs of a bad one.

As far as I'm known , the whitepaper is just for developers to introduce to their project. That's like a document for reference, not realistic fact.

I think the whitepaper simplifies and clarifies project development. Because without a whitepaper the project is incomplete. but it is not very influential because this protocol can be copied or taken from other projects and modified in such a way, the most important thing of a project is the real action of each roadmap they specify.

You may know good white paper if it shows what they want to accomplish, informing the public of their project, why they believe their product is needed, it has a roadmap, and what is the methods they need to use in order to meet their goals.

I beleive a sign of a good whitepaper defines the detailed roadmap of the project.  Aside from that it also clarifies lots of concerns if there is an upcoming ICO for the said project.  It has the the proposal plans, the problem it addressed, how it solves the project, the team and their portfolio and experiences, the question and answer and the location of the company or group office that proposed  that project.

A whitepaper is basically supposed to be used to introduce a company to its potential investors what its capable of doing but the problem with some of these whitepapes is they are exaggerated to the point that the writers of these also seem to only get ideas from existing projects.

from whitepaper you can see what's necessary and completeness of the project. Maybe problem and solution, roadmap and team with completeness i think that's all base to judge.

They have to be very studied at the beggining.. the WP is one of the most important things of an ico, if it has been writen by a 15 years old guy, the entire ICO is going to be the biggest shit that has been created so far.
So for me, if they have a great design and a good proper language, it is a good one.

Whitepaper should  provide detail information about the project and how ico investors will be benefited by it in both short and long term.

Also it should describe why they are different than other similar platform and how they can easily get ahead of their competitor.

Rather than whitepaper project behind it is important because if project can't make any profit when they will start their operation they can't complete what they have promised in the whitepaper.

Try to look for projects that have realistic claims and complete roadmap of development for at least next 12 months.

A good whitepaper should be concise. It should clearly reveal the problem its trying to solve and why their solutions works in believable terms.

Whitepaper being the eye for the investors whether to invest or not must be detailed and in accordance to their goal and organization, does it indicate the growth and process of the project. It should be clear to understand and to read as well. It should explain the good return of investment. That's why many preferred to invest on trusted companies or organizations, those who have already a product to lessen their time to read set of pages of whitepaper. But they should still read it to not miss out any detailed to not regret investing at the end.

I would not say so. A good whitepaper for me at least is something that explains the current problems at hand along with the solutions that the startup is going to provide in order to combat those problems.

However an extremely technical whitepaper is generally a no - no for me. I get turned down by too much of technical jargon and most whitepapers try to keep it to a minimum otherwise there is a separate "technical whitepaper".

However a badly written whitepaper or a rushed whitepaper is a bad mark for the project.

I believe a good whitepaper states their aim or goal. They have to state the problem and come up with a good solution to convince investors to invest in their projects. It also has to be realistic and not just for the show.

Those rush whitepaper that has plenty of typos and has many unanswered questions or hangs in sentences that we should really avoid joining with and a good whitepaper for me is less page yet can vividly be viewed their ideas.

Yes whitepaper is very important in any project and without whitepaper the project is like die.
But though the project has whitepaper, its not guarantee whether the project os good or not. Need more deep research.

In whitepaper, you can see their the team behind it and it is the most important thing inside it, we need to see who were the team was, what are their objectives in it, their probable solutions and many more, so you have to explore and do research about the team behind it as it is the most important part of it.

Good Sign:

1. Roadmap - there should be at least a roadmap and what the project wants to accomplished. At least a good 3 - 6 months project pipeline.
2. The team - the devs or the top management should be also has a name and a face in the Whitepaper so that we can verify if they are really legit or not.
3. Jargon - not too much technical terms, because most investors will not understand it anyways. Brief concise and straight to the point.

Bad Sign:

1. Spelling mistakes - If I found some spelling or grammar mistakes, I tend to stay away because it doesn't look professional. They are asking investors to pour money on them and yet they can't even proof read their paper
2. No teams mentioned. - very shady to me

since you posted this in trading discussion I am going to focus on that.

you only read an altcoin's whitepaper if you are interested in its technology and want to learn more about how it works and what ideas it is implementing. otherwise as a trader reading the whitepaper of an altcoin is not going to give you any worthwhile information about it. altcoins work based on hype and pump and dump. and neither of the good ones ever give you as big a profit as a pumped shitcoin can give you.

Yeah, after reading many whitepapers It's not so hard to spot a shady/bad ones. I always skip projects that doesn't reveal details about team and advisors.

To good signs, I would also add detailed fund section and comparsion with competing projects.



Well, if you only focus on short time hype trading it is true, whitepaper and basics won't matter. But if you also invest long term, it may show the potential of the project.

In whitepaper there are detail explained all about the project, like what problems the want to solved and the solutions,.how does the project work, ICO information detail, the team founder , they has working product/ MVP etc. But to know the project good or bad i also check in their youtube channel to find interview of the team founder, just to know if the team is real person

The advantage of having whitepaper in a project is to introduce the project, it helps the investor to be clarified with the inquiries and if the investor needs to be answered with some question then they should contact admins or Developers.
the Disadvantage of Whitepaper. some of the written platform in a whitepaper doesn't seem to be true in the future, and sometimes it is used to deceive investors with some deceitful words in it. i mean as an investor reviewing and carefully Reading the WP.

I have seen some project that has Good Whitepaper and seems promising but need to invest at your own risk, I am reading some whitepaper to a certain  Project eventually, like with the icerock Mining, UBIQUICOIn, Eligma, VLB. these projects have Good Whitepaper and etc. To investors always carefully Check 7 times.

You have to keep it simple. After you read the whitepaper you have to know:
1) Whats the problem they are solving and for whom
2) How are they going to solve it
3) Do they have the means to solve and market it (team, connections etc.)

If the whitepaper does not give you all the informations so that you can answer all those questions and give you confidence into the project, then the whitepaper is not good. And also the project is probably not good enough to invest into.

Pros are mainly it gives you all the necessary information of what is the goal or what's their max cap , total supply
Other important things are how are they going to use our funds and how the funds will be alloted for different purposes like development marketing
Now the cons is small yet it makes a big difference and that is most of them are copied from famous ico or they don't plan to achieve anything from it

well the problem is that I don't see that many altcoins, specially the top 5 to have any good future in the long run. it will always come down real usage and majority of them have none. when they go up based on pure speculation and hype (which you may even call "pump") it is not something you want to invest long term based on it!

generally it has been seen that the good ico whitepaper are not that flashy ,they are more focused on explaining the concepts and its utilities rather than eye catching text or images.it is also right as blockchain developer or programmer are not graphic artist so they mainly focus on content,and flashy whitepaper are generally scam ,there content is also stolen so it is better  to research before investing.although above reason may or may not be valid but in my experience it generally goes like this.so its better to choose from ico from ico incubator sites or do your own research before investing.

I think so. Whitepapers is a report or instruction by a competent authority for the purpose of helping the reader understand a problem that is bitcoin - a digital currency released in the form of software code. Open source is the most popular in the world up to the present time. This is the advantage of whitepapers. There is a small shortcoming that there are many projects to ICO bitcoin, so must learn thoroughly before investing.

Good white paper have all information about the project in every aspect with true data, this is the first ( main ) people see, it should full detail information. But you can't see only from white paper because you must see all part from the project. Besides that, white paper can't become sign to join project. Meaning see project as one not pieces, do that and you'll find the best project for you. 

Whitepaper designed is basically not the basis. Plain or having a stunning image, doesn't matter.

In general, whitepaper is designed to have a clear content about the inside stuff of a certain project. Even a shit project have a wonderful whitepaper as no doubt, investors tend to look at these before putting a money. Roadmaps, token sale period, token used, technology etc. all are included in a good whitepaper and i=t's nice to see the content. The question here now is, is the execution will followed properly? Are those goals will really achieved in the long term?

A good and well detailed whitepaper is not really a basis that a project will be successful as like I said, even a shit project does have a good whitepaper with good content. But it can served as reference and recipe in making a good analyzation about what project will you choose.

You may not know if a white paper is good or bad becuase most developers just write what they feel that will interest the people who will invest. Even you it will interest you to know that most scam ICOs have interesting whitepaper which mostly lures investors to invest in it and at the end it ends ends up as a hoax. Though, some ICOs still act according to their whitepaper.

Firstly read the complete whitepaper and decide for yourself whether you find it legit or not. The signs in the whitepaper of a scam could be-

• Too promising
• Fake staff enrolled (I once saw Ryan Gosling as the ceo of a project.)
• Roadmap not practical.

And things like these.
Just research and find for yourself by communicating the team and having a word with dev, You'd eventually get to know by their response whether they're professional or not which will give you an idea about the project's future.

Probably the most worthwhile point here. Anyone who purports to support a project with investment and then takes it to trading either doesn't understand what it means to back a project or doesn't understand that the technology almost always has little to do with the price of alts. Outside the precious handful of coins with actual use, everything else sits purely on speculatory value and exchanges hands only as a buys and sells.


Which just made me realise - I held a couple of alts that I used for the longest time without even having read a single line of its whitepaper or GitHub! In fact, other than Bitcoin, the only whitepapers/GH pages I picked up to read up till July 2017 were ICO ones.

For me a good whitepaper is the one that explained the detail, starting from the background why the creators create the coin and what is the usage of the coin, what is the unique feature and how will the developers and users can used this feature to make the coin stand out, the detail roadmap and vision must be clear, and the most important is the whitepaper able to attract investors,  whitepaper is the first step to introduce coin so without a clear and proper explanation people wont interested

From my experience, these are the sign of it :

Good :
1. Detailed.
2. Simple but on point.
3. The idea of the project explained to the core.
4. Chart and images for some details.
5. Using a good contrast on color.

These are the good, while the bad is definitely the opposite of them. As we know, whitepaper is the tools to introduce the project to people, so it needs to be great, not only good. Last whitepaper i read wad VLB project , this is one example of a great whitepaper if you ask my opinion.

A good whitepaper details everything you need to know about the company's project (why they create the coin, purpose and how it will benefits the public.)

It also entail the road map and vision of the company. 

I think the good whitepaper have clearly roadmap, developer teams, base of ideas, target, and other plan for that project in future. If the whitepaper can explain their target and tecnology that can be posible tecnology in future and can can accept with logic, i think that is a good one. But, if you see some whitepaper with a lousy explanation, not clearly explane their base and target, not show developer team and roadmap, that indicated the project is bad.

In my point of view a sign of goo whitepaper have a detailed roadmap of project. They have realistic methods in order to need their goal and objective of the project.

The fact is that I trust the entire documentation to the minimum, which the developer of the project shows. After all, it is they who provide this information, and in it you can write anything you like to attract investors.

White paper brings a detailed description of the scheme for solving a specific problem with the help of a specific product.
It also explains why this approach is the best for the market and is profitable for the investor.
So when you examine the WP pay your attention to the following aspects:

Problem. How relevant is it? For whom is it relevant? Is there a market behind this product?
Ideally, the solution to the problem should be as demanded as "water in Africa".

Decision. How viable is it?
Try to think as a consumer and to imagine the benefit from the product.

Product. Is the MVP or beta version running? Are there any product modules ready? If not, why?
If the project has just begun developing its own solution, it may have faster competitors.

Value. What is the difference between the product (or a service) from the analogues? What does the team know about their competitors? Does it "hack" the market, offering completely new advantages?

Prospects. How do the ambitions and stage of the project correlate with the declared amounts of investment? How well does the team imagine the marketing strategy? What development scenarios does it offer?

Token. How is the token designed? What can you exchange it for? How and what operations can be carried out with it? Who and why will buy the token? Is it valuable?

Conditions. How many coins are emitted? What percentage of tokens are allocated to the main team? How many of them go to the bounty?

I'm mostly involved in coins, not ICOs. To me, the whitepaper should contain all technical stuff about the coin I'm looking at. New technologies implemented, problems workaround, calculations etc. Roadmap I prefer to view separately from the whitepaper.

That is true, even top 10 may be too narrow to find any altcoin with real world usage. Maybe in top 50 you could find a few projects which have a chance to still be relevant in a year or two. The thing is whitepaper can only show if the team has good idea, vision and is capable to develop a product, but it doesn't guarantee it will happen.

A good whitepaper attracts investors, so a simple way of marketing is whitepaper.
If you have not a well and basic defined whitepaper you can not find potential investor so much

All the information you mentioned can be displayed in the website or other channels but the whitepaper is technically needed for both developpers and community. What recently started to happen in some ICOs have no start capital but the whitepaper which is not enough at all. Even satoshi provided the bitcoin whitepaper after its lunch and not before. May be am not giving the right opinion here so it is still fundamental to check the white paper before investing or make any judgement.
Question: Would the project keep the need of the whitepaper after finishing stages in roadmap?

Recently, ICOs whitepapers are not what they state to be. It was  formerly that Whitepapers executions, what they state in it, but recently, whitepapers are mere written words which only purpose is just to entice and lure investors to to put their money in a new ICO. Developers of projects may just use it as a form of marketing, but the truth is few of them actually work on what is written there. If you luck to find a good ICO with a working Whitepaper then good for you.

not all projects as you say. some projects run the project according to the plan written in the whitepaper, but there are also some that not run according whitepaper and there are also some projects that update their whitepaper after the ICO ended

we cant completely relay on white paper some whitepaper may be copied from other projects so we should check other aspects as well before investing in any ico

The whole concept of Whitepaper has been greatly abuse, I don't know how many people in the space read Bitcoin whitepaper, I have read it several times before I do grasp the whole concept of what Bitcoin stand for, but what will have now is just a marketing paper where they say all this fancy words with no real technical details. What I look for now is the people behind the project before the idea

I think the plus is that we can get acquainted with the concept of development, to understand what and how developers want to do. But the downside is that they are all similar and to understand the need to read them entirely. Otherwise to the eye they all look the same.

Yeah right, I do not believe in white paper either, because people can make beautiful plans on white paper but may never come true. If we have long participated in an ICO, then at least we can recognize the people behind them as well as their team, perhaps from their home country. With a country that has a good reputation in an ICO I think it could be a recommendation.

I would say whitepapers are always a pro for future investors.  A project that doesn't have one means it doesn't have a vision or path to take.  Signs of a bad whitepaper one that was copy and pasted from another project. 

As for me whitepaper is not the only one availiable sign of a good project, also fast replying devs, socials always fresh, many others are also

I agree with your opinion, most whitepaper is written very briefly and there are a lot of questions after they are read, many technical details are missing

Whitepaper is a proposal document and a kind of business like ICO that creates coins and others. Regarding this matter about its pro,one of which is if the proposal clicks or if it has a good potential in crypto world. And the bad maybe is if the proposal doesn't fit in or a scam on the other hand. The thing is you can actually do a research if it is not working proposal. In this way,you can actually monitor if the proposal is legit or not at the same time is really time consuming if you keep on tracking about the proposal. So I guess not so much cons of it.

Yes you are right both, unfortunately many projects do not pay much attention to Whitepaper. Although investors are studying it, I have seen many projects where it contains inaccurate information or incomplete, I am afraid to invest in such projects. Sorry for my English, I use translator so that the essence can be transferred incorrectly :(

It seems to me that good white paper is the key to the company's future success. Every investor who plans to invest a large amount carefully examines white paper, so it's the face of the project. If the white paper does not clearly indicate how the company works with its plans and principles, many investors will simply not invest in such a company.

There are also good working project like creating their own blockchain and own platform with unique blend of features where there can be no found on some ICOs or other developing crypto-related projects. Whitepapers are just a formality of representing on how the project works, if  the projects are too common then it can easily present to some potential investors and for public views. There are also whitepaper that are for private use or confidentially reproduced to prevent copying their idea particularly that project is quite unique, innovative and revolutionary. Just like releasing the github source of the project, some of it will release just a year after the project was launch to avoid competitions and copycats.

based on the detail or not the existing whitepaper
a serious developer will care about all the business models they want to apply, so everyone who wants to read Whitepaper should be given the most complete information

Honestly, I am one of those people who are lazy reading white papers. So what I do is I visit the sites like icobench and icorating, those are my trusted sites for looking bounty campaigns. I look at the ratings of ico profile, team and working product. In the overall rating, I make sure that it is not only driven by the ico profile or team alone, their working product has a high rating because it is something that drives the whole campaign and it is the one that attracts the investors' attention.

A whitepaper in itself only has pro's in my opinion, but the real problem is people in ico projects just buying these whitepapers and have others write them.

Lots of white paper taking big content from other successful ico’s . These white papers are payed content it’s not actual vision of the Ico company . Lots of projects failed to deliver roadmap which mentioned in their white paper . I think daici would be solution for this.

A good white paper should have the following sections:
- A problem
- A proposed solution and the product description
- A description of the token commercialization (product interaction with economy and technical provisions of commercialization)
- Team members
- Tokens issue and perspectives

It’s vital that the white paper includes a detailed technical description of the project, and its future development plans (development roadmap). In theory, the team should present a detailed working plan for the next 12–18 months, which should include the beta-launch. If some tasks of the roadmap have already been performed, that may be considered as an advantage for the project team.

I think a perfect white paper won’t help a bad project. If the project team proposes a solution to a non-existent problem or to a non-essential problem, or if its members lack development experience and are not familiar with the blockchain, it’s highly probable that the project won’t be successful — even if its documentation is brilliant.

I think that a good white paper should have a clear plan and a substantive role. It must be clear when it introduces its project, and it must be practical, and it must have sufficient innovation. This will attract a lot of investment. This will make this project better developed.

There are a few sections a good white paper must have:
- Problem
- Solution & Product
- Token Implementation (how the token works with the product, economics and technical)
- Token Deployment & Plan
- Team

From my point of view, a good whitepaper should have the team section. I think it is the most important section of any whitepaper. I like to know who they are, what their objectives are, and what their reasonable solutions.

A good whitepaper should indicate a specific plan. I generally like to see a detailed plan for the next 12–18 months (that includes a beta launch at minimum)

I argue that a good cryptocurrency white paper should explain how the technology will work, and the best white papers do so with varying levels of complexity and technical knowledge required.

The best white papers will be honest about why their solution needs the blockchain. Many projects freely admit that they’ll only be using the blockchain for token generation and some smart contracts management, and that’s perfectly okay. But if a startup claims to have some novel idea for blockchain-based carwashes or something like that, beware.

A good white paper you can see the team behind them, this is the most important thing in it, what are their goals.

The drawback is that some con artists use a good white paper to blind investors' eyes.

The advantage is that it fully discloses its team, project prospects, and project planning. The downside is that for ordinary people to come to the book they can not tell whether the information they disclose is true or not. Many white papers have appeared. Liars are everywhere.

Personally, I argue a good whitepaper should include tokens statistics part. I think it is the one of the most important parts of a good whitepaper. What is total supply, price of token, soft cap? How many tokens go for crowd sale, for team, advisers and bounty.

Good Whitepaper is well structured without exessive unnessesary information that clarifies the main question that appear from the side of investors.  It has to have roadmap, analysis of the opponents, explanationa and expectation about the groeth of the token, the teammembers and information about them.

Yes, I guess a bad whitepaper can also touch all these questions but it will not open them up to the end. Here is a good video about whitepaper in general:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ILpLo5TSnM

Apart from all the necessary dos and donts given above, Language is really important, written in easy to understand format, capturing interest with apt keywords and enough detail to get a clear picture. Typo errors are always a turnoff. Just keep it simple with team, project details, vision and solution highlighted.

A good Whitepaper should contain the following sections:
- problem;
- suggested solution and product description;
- a description of the implementation of the token (like interacting with the product, Economics and technical implementation);
- team;
- token issuance and further plans.

At the same time, despite the fact that the section devoted to the project team is usually located at the end of the document, it is one of the most important elements.
And do not forget that Whitepaper is only a marketing tool, if the project is of no interest to anyone, even high-quality Whitepaper will not save it.

good whitepaper should bring all the readers to learn something new, and not explain unimportant thing that generally we saw like others whitepaper
content of the whitepaper explain the point of the project, and at one page at least give a limit of word

i almost see the whitepaper like reading a whole dictionary  :-[
it will make people to skip or even didnt want to lazy read those whitepaper

Good whitepaper should be brief and straight to the point. Albert Einstein said "If you cannot explain it in simple terms, you don't understand it well enough". Most whitepapers now a too long and full of irrelevant information. Good whitepaper should be problem, solution and how. Simple, no fancy words

there is no benchmark to be a comparison in judging a white paper. most importantly, you should try to understand it especially for the concept issues raised into the white paper. if not logic, you can search other ico.

Usually they all look like same to me as long as you dont go reading them upto their depth! The logics and protocol written in their can give good idea to technical person and for common investors like me, I just care about what is new in that paper and in what way it is different than the best once that I have already seen until now. So its more or less comparison for me but does give me idea about how to proceed with my investment. FYI : I read the whitepaper only if the project summary helps me understand what new in that. Dont fall for many of the project who just copy paste the dam thing!

The advantage is that it helps us better understand the ICO project. All project information is in it. However, there are also some inadequacies if we are overwhelmed by the Whitepaper, which may not be practical, and they can draw on a fake project, with captivating words. But the fact is that ICO does not work out as they say.

A whitepaper is an authoritative report that gives everyone all the information needed and a bird's eye view over a project or an ICO. It contains the background, history as well as its current and future development. Therefore it is very important. The more a whitepaper is detailed and well-written, the more it will be able to attract future investors.

Howrver, nowadays, ICO scams had also taken into consideration how important whitepaper is. That is why some ICO's are actualy investing on having a well-written whitepaper to fool not only newbies.

White paper is an important document that tells how the project technology will work.
This file usually contains a detailed description of the architecture, as well as how the users interact with the system, information about the current market situation and growth forecasts, the conditions for issuing and using tokens, and a list of team members, investors and project consultants.
The WP should be written so that any investor who is not even familiar with cryptography understands the idea of the project.

Whitepaper is a document which is prepared by the developing team of an ICO prior to the launch of new currency which specifies the details of the coin or the associated project. A whitepaper is considered good if it clearly gives the complete details of the project and clearly defines the roadmap. The future prospects should be made clear in the whitepaper. Whereas, a whitepaper is considered bad when the details about the project are not given completely and clearly.

Base on my understanding the whitepaper is the details where we can see what kind of platform that we are going to deal on it. You can read their the inputs like the pros and cons that you wanted to know. But all along white paper is just and informations that needs to scan for us to understand well. It is also prepared by the team who made the project it is kinda document prior to launch the developing project.

I think the Whitepaper of a fake project will be messy with no proper structure or meaning. The details will be at a high level or not relevant at all to the project title. Nothing will make decent sense. A good project will have a properly structured whitepaper with a detailed description of the project plan and its implementation.

I think the Whitepaper of a fake project will be messy with no proper structure or meaning. The details will be at a high level or not relevant at all to the project title. Nothing will make decent sense. A good project will have a properly structured whitepaper with a detailed description of the project plan and its implementation.

Seems like your topic title is misleading. I believe you are looking for signs that indicate if a whitepaper is good or bad.

Anyway, to help you with this here are some guidelines:

1. If there are no grammatical errors.
2. If it has coherent content that actually outlines the project's purpose, solution, and roadmap.
3. If it looks professional. Some whitepapers look like they were just typed in MS word and don't even have any type of styling or design.

Personally, I think a good whitepaper:
- Gets the point across
- Does not market
- Is highly academic
- Describes attacks against the cryptocurrency, and how they are countered
- Describes the mathematics and cryptography adequately and technically

Honestly, I used to read a bad whitepaper. It looks like a PowerPoint presentation which doesn't describe the mathematics, lacks references, and tries to cover for a lack of innovation.

From my point of view, I think that a good whitepaper will clearly state the problem to be solved, and the solution to be provided.

A good whitepaper should mention the business benefits. This section is the soul of a white paper, and discuss return on investment (ROI), usability, adherence to standards, and speed of implementation.

Personally, I do not speak highly of a whitepaper including spelling mistakes, because it is not professional. I think it's a bad whitepaper, so I will not invest in that project.

Pretty much. It's much easier to tell if a whitepaper is bad after reading a lot of them, you can easily tell from the experience.

A good whitepaper attracts investors, so a simple way of marketing is whitepaper.
If you have not a well and basic defined whitepaper you can not find potential investor so much.

Documents are an important part of the ICO.  because it contains all the details of the project.  This is the same as the business plan.  So the projects have development goals.  This is the engine for creating a promising project.  And it motivates all interested investors.

White paper is really important document, the main pros is that devs usually put there all the information..

I think that a good white paper should have a clear plan and a substantive role. It must be clear when it introduces its project, and it must be practical, and it must have sufficient innovation. This will attract a lot of investment. This will make this project better developed.

I think it needs to be learned from people who use it, because who does not use is difficult to explain. Very interesting question for owners.

From my point of view, a good whitepaper should have the team section. I think it is the most important section of any whitepaper. I like to know who they are, what their objectives are, and what their reasonable solutions.