---
title: "No Original Research"
url: "https://radix.wiki/policy/no-original-research"
version: "2.0.1"
updated: 2026-08-26
last_verified: 2026-08-14
license: CC-BY-4.0
license_url: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
---

# No Original Research

|  |  |
| --- | --- |
| **Policy** | No original research (NOR) |
| **Type** | Content policy (core) |
| **Derived from** | [Verifiability](/policy/verifiability) |
| **Applies to** | Every article; most often interpretive claims about on-chain data |
| **Enforcement** | Moved to [Blog](/blog) or [Ideas](/ideas); sourcing |
| **Adopted** | 31 July 2026 |

Articles must not present **original research** – unpublished analysis, speculation, or conclusions that no reliable source has stated.[[1]](#ref-1) Every interpretive claim should be attributable to a published source.

## Reporting on-chain data

Reading and reporting a value from the ledger (a balance, a supply, a proposal outcome) is description, not original research, and is encouraged. Extrapolating from it – predicting price, inferring intent, or drawing unpublished economic conclusions – is original research and belongs in the Blog or Ideas Pipeline, not in an encyclopedic article.

## Where the line has fallen

Three cases from this wiki’s own record show what separates a reading from an inference. Each sits on a page a reader can open, and in each the handling now published is the correct one.

### Correct data, invented model

An earlier version of [Daffy’s page](/community/daffy) reported the May 2026 governance votes as falling short of the 671,470,000 XRD quorum written into each. The balances it read were accurate; the model applied to them was not. Voting weight on those accounts is held mostly as stake units rather than liquid XRD – 785,092,070 of the 910,989,217 XRD behind the Stokenet proposal – so counting liquid balances alone understated the electorate more than sevenfold and inverted the outcome. Reading the balances was description. The total assembled from them was an unpublished model presented as a measurement.

### A silence is not a reason

[Hermes Protocol](/ecosystem/hermes-protocol) is recorded as dormant on four dated checks: the _Enter App_ button on its own homepage points at a host with no DNS record, its announcement channel has been silent since June 2023, its newest commit is from February 2024, and its website still serves normally. The page states those four things and then states the gap – no wind-down was ever announced. Why the project stopped is not established, and supplying a reason (a failed raise, a pivot, a departure) would be original research however plausible it read.

### Reproducing a published method

Running someone else’s published method and reporting what it returns is description, provided the method, its inputs, and its limits are stated with the result. The [DLT efficiency metric](/contents/resources/python-scripts/dlt-efficiency-metric) re-runs a 2023 comparison and publishes the 2026 figures next to the caveat that makes them honest: Radix is the only row whose search term changed between the two runs, so its two numbers are not measuring the same thing. The reading that caveat forecloses – treating the move from 123× to 51× as a gap closing – is the part that would have been original research.

## Where an inference belongs

A conclusion worth drawing is not worth suppressing; it is worth putting where it can be argued with. Analysis, forecasts, and interpretation belong in the [Blog](/blog), where they carry a date and an author, or in the [Ideas](/ideas) pipeline while a proposal is still live. Where someone else has published the analysis, an article may report it as theirs – attributed, dated, and not adopted into the wiki’s own voice, per [neutral point of view](/policy/neutral-point-of-view).

The same applies to the honest gap. Where a claim cannot be checked against the ledger, a filed document, or a published source – an off-ledger balance, an unannounced roadmap, a private agreement – write what is known, attribute it to whoever said it, and state plainly what is not established. Naming the gap is a stronger article than filling it.

## See also

- [Verifiability](/policy/verifiability)
- [Neutral point of view](/policy/neutral-point-of-view)
- [Notability](/policy/notability)
- [Freshness](/policy/freshness)
- [Conflict of interest](/policy/conflict-of-interest)
- [Editorial notices](/policy/editorial-notices)

### References

1. Wikipedia – _Wikipedia:No original research_ — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research