• Feature Name: (fill me in with a unique identifier, my_awesome_feature)
  • Start Date: (fill me in with today’s date, YYYY-MM-DD)
  • RFC PR: (leave this empty)
  • Fabric Component: (fill me in with underlined fabric component, core, orderer/consensus and etc.)
  • Fabric Issue: (leave this empty)

Summary

One paragraph explanation of the feature.

Motivation

Why are we doing this? What use cases does it support? What is the expected outcome?

Guide-level explanation

Explain the proposal as if it was already included in Fabric and you were teaching it to another Fabric developer. That generally means:

  • Introducing new named concepts.
  • Explaining the feature largely in terms of examples.
  • Explaining how Fabric programmers should think about the feature, and how it should impact the way they use fabric. It should explain the impact as concretely as possible.
  • If applicable, provide sample error messages, deprecation warnings, or migration guidance.
  • If applicable, describe the differences between teaching this to established and new Fabric developers.
  • If applicable, describe any changes that may affect the security of communications or administration.

For implementation-oriented RFCs (e.g. for validator internals), this section should focus on how contributors should think about the change, and give examples of its concrete impact. For policy RFCs, this section should provide an example-driven introduction to the policy, and explain its impact in concrete terms.

Reference-level explanation

This is the technical portion of the RFC. Explain the design in sufficient detail that:

  • Its interaction with other features is clear.
  • It is reasonably clear how the feature would be implemented.
  • Corner cases are dissected by example.

The section should return to the examples given in the previous section, and explain more fully how the detailed proposal makes those examples work.

Drawbacks

Why should we not do this? Are there any risks that must be considered along with this rfc.

Rationale and alternatives

  • Why is this design the best in the space of possible designs?
  • What other designs have been considered and what is the rationale for not choosing them?
  • What is the impact of not doing this?

Prior art

Discuss prior art, both the good and the bad, in relation to this proposal. A few examples of what this can include are:

  • For consensus, global state, transaction processors, and smart contracts implementation proposals: Does this feature exists in other distributed ledgers and what experience have their communities had?
  • For community proposals: Is this done by some other community and what were their experiences with it?
  • For other teams: What lessons can we learn from what other communities have done here?
  • Papers: Are there any published papers or great posts that discuss this? If you have some relevant papers to refer to, this can serve as a more detailed theoretical background.

This section is intended to encourage you as an author to think about the lessons from other distributed ledgers, provide readers of your RFC with a fuller picture. If there is no prior art, that is fine - your ideas are interesting to us whether they are brand new or if it is an adaptation.

Note that while precedent set by other distributed ledgers is some motivation, it does not on its own motivate an RFC. Please also take into consideration that Fabric sometimes intentionally diverges from common distributed ledger/blockchain features.

Testing

  • What kinds of test development and execution will be required in order to validate this proposal, beyond the usual mandatory unit tests?
  • List integration test scenarios which will outline correctness of proposed functionality.

Dependencies

  • Describe all dependencies that this proposal might have on other RFCs, known JIRA issues, Hyperledger Fabric components. Dependencies upon RFCs or issues should be recorded as links in the proposals issue itself.

  • List down related RFCs proposals that depend upon current RFC, and likewise make sure they are also linked to this RFC.

Unresolved questions

  • What parts of the design do you expect to resolve through the RFC process before this gets merged?
  • What parts of the design do you expect to resolve through the implementation of this feature before stabilization?
  • What related issues do you consider out of scope for this RFC that could be addressed in the future independently of the solution that comes out of this RFC?