Bitcoin Forum

Hello folks,
I recently wrote a whitepaper for an ICO project, and to prove my integrity and concept to investors I made it as comprehensive as possible. It got to 80 pages.

But since then several people have suggested that 80 pages is too much, saying I should reduce it to 20-25 pages.

I am undecided. What is the right length for an ICO whitepaper?

its up to you, as long as you will write every information, everything that the investors and the community needs to know about the project, it must be written on it.
I have read many whitepaper's before, its pages is not a big deal, there are some whitepapers that has 20 pages length or much lower, and there are some whitepaper that has a 70 pages above.

There is no right or wrong thing, but as a person who reads a lot of Whitepapers.
1. Yea, really looks great when you see that Whitepaper of the company you are researching is 80 pages long, but you can decide that these 80 pages are just written to fool people, that they dont worth anything.  ???
2. If you find out that is only 20 pages, it is a little bit, not serious.  ::)
3. For me, the perfect length is between 35-45 pages of detailed, structured and well organized whitepaper, with a lot of pictures and diagrams, that very well explain the whole idea of the ICO.  ;)

First of all, decide what the objective of the whitepaper is. If it is going to be a marketing tool, then decide what the messages are. If it is going to be a technical summary, then decide how detailed you want it to be.

Bitcoin's whitepaper was only 8 pages long! Plus 1 page of references. It was a technical tool to explain the technology, and so precisely done it only needed 8 pages.

But whitepapers these days ramble on because they forgot to set their objectives. For me:
1. Technical Whitepaper - whatever number of pages it needs
2. Marketing brochure - here you sell the idea, this can be as many pages, including ICO details.

you are very excited to create a whitepaper for up to 80 pages. but I think it's very overwhelming and can make people bored to read it. 20-25 pages is enough and can convince many investors. you can see some whitepapers here.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=159.0

It really depends on the project, but in general, I'd agree that 80 pages is too much. I doubt many people would read that in its entirety. Around 20 or so pages is generally fine. Anything over might dissuade potential readers.

Thanks, but must there be lots of pictures? What about cold hard fact in place of those? I might be wrong

Thanks everyone for these insightful replies. I think I will reduce it to 25 pages in line with expert suggestions. I hope it won't be too late.

I think most of the time, nobody reads a 80-page white paper, which is obviously too annoying.
You can refer to the white paper of the other ICO team in the ANN thread, so you can summarize the number of pages you need.

As long as it's well written and concise then I am happy for it to be as long as it needs to be. If you're able to write 80 or more pages of good quality content then that only speaks to how much you know about the ICO and how much you believe in it. Quality in this case is far more important than quantity.

Many ICOs now have a litepaper or a 1/2 pager to go alongside the whitepaper, this is for those people who are less inclined to read a large document. I would recommend you trying to do something similar with your ICO because many people will be put off by 80 pages.

Edit: I just read your reply that was posted as I was typing in which you said you would condense it. - If the 80 page version is well written then do not scrap it, also include it and just use both versions, the longer one being the more detailed version for more interested users.

Thank you very much for that brilliant suggestion. I think I will go with both the whitepaper as is, and a 20 page lightpaper.

There is no right length. Attracting investors has several stages. First, you need to grab their attention, typically that was done with an "elevator pitch", 2 to 3 minutes. Then you need an executive summary, no more than 5 pages and then comes the business plan.

Please, notice that while everyone talks about White Papers, some of the ICOs need a Business Plan. A White Paper is something to discuss technology and principles and many business do not have any innovation in terms of mathematics or software engineering.

One liner: If you can't convince me of spending more time with you in 2 pages, forget about writing anything else.

There is no ideal number of pages but what you can do is to write as much detailed whitepaper and make it less pages because not all the people would read that 80pages or even 30pages of the whitepaper,probably quality over quantity will be the best thing to do,one page with quality contents is better than 10 low quality contents,so sumarize it but do not remove the imporant informations that people needs to read.

I have seen white paper with less than 30 pages to more than 100 pages. IMO, the right length depend on your project and should present all the information needed by investors. If you like, you can create a summary for those people who do not wish to read the full white paper.

I think length of the white paper is entirely depend on the project.  It needs to have all important details for investors in briefly and quality is more important. But most investors may like to read white papers around 30 pages.

Thanks everyone for your wonderful replies. Your replies have helped me come to a very informed decision.