Blockchains Need More Than a PRD: A Guide to Writing Effective Blockchain Product Requirements

A Product Requirements Document (PRD) for blockchain products is not just a planning document for designers and engineers, but a shared contract between various stakeholders. It should define the product's purpose, user personas, features, non-functional requirements, constraints, risks, launch criteria, and metrics.

For blockchain products, it's essential to add sections that cover on-chain and off-chain architecture, smart contract requirements, wallet flows, tokenomics, security assumptions, audits, incident response, regulatory constraints, governance, and upgrade mechanisms. A PRD should also explain why blockchain is needed for the product.

The document should start with the problem being solved, who has the problem, why blockchain improves the outcome, and what's out of scope. It's crucial to define users, stakeholders, and governance, including retail users, institutional users, liquidity providers, validators, node operators, DAO members, token holders, delegates, and treasury managers.

The PRD should also specify functional requirements, both on-chain and off-chain. On-chain requirements include contract modules, public functions, state variables, events emitted, access control rules, supported token standards, network assumptions, and testable language for writing requirements.