BCPs are Blockchain Commons Proposals, meant to promte open, interoperable, secure & compassionate digital infrastructure. These are still not standards, but they are more mature that our BCR Research (BCR) papers and/or have been deployed within a wider community. BCRs usually become BCPs if they meet at least one of two criteria:
- Two or more companies have implemented a BCR; and/or
- Blockchain Commons feels that they have matured and are ready to advance.
In addition, any conflicts with existing standards must be understood, considered worthwhile, and clearly discussed when a BCR is promoted.
When a BCR becomes a BCP, we:
- Increasingly include the community as an important part of the conversation.
- Consider the BCP to be a viable candidate for further standardization.
A BCP may still be fluid, but there will be community discussion for changes and generally a community-oriented process for continuing to expand the Proposal. The ultimate goal is to specify, setup, and mature these Proposals, and thereafter turn them over to another authority, possible as a BIP, an IETF draft, or a W3C standard. (Requirements from a standards body are one of the main reasons that a BCP may require changes, even breaking changes, as was the process when Gordian Envelope became an IETF Internet Draft.)
This directory includes all documents that have matured and/or that have been turned over to standards or pre-standards organizations, with the latter also including Rebooting the Web of Trust.
| Number | Title | Version | Org. | Owner | Type | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BCP-2020-001 | BCP Template | 0.1.0 | Christopher Allen | Process | Draft |
Also see our Research and our Testimony.
Please feel free to submit a PR to request the advancement of a BCR Work Item to a BCP if it meets the criteria of two or more companies having implemented the BCR. Simply follow the administrative steps for Promotion. If a BCR does not have two-company commitment, but you think it's sufficiently mature and/or important, please contact us.
To create a BCP, first please consult the BCP template, which is BCP #2020-001.
To contribute your BCP using the template format, you can fork the repo, add the appropriate files, then submit a PR. For the core BCP file, please use the format bcp-YYYY-SSS.md for the file name, where YYYY and SSS match the current year and next sequence number, per "BCP Numbering", below.
If additional documentation is required, please PR a matching directory (e.g., a directory called bcp-2020-001 for bcp-2020-001.md) with the documents as contents.
Please also add your BCP to the "BCP Listing" below.
All contributions to this repo require a Signed Contributor License Agreement (which will be needed if we submit to other organizations like IETF, W3C, Linux Foundation, etc.).
Please number all BCPs with a four-digit number representing the current year (YYYY) followed by a three-digit sequence number for that year (SSS). For example: bcp-2020-001 is the first BCP for 2020, bcp-2020-017 is the 17th, and bcp-2021-001 is the first BCP for 2021.
Note that the sequence number reverts to 001 at the start of each year.
Please be sure that your title is concise, yet informative.
When updating BCPs, please use semantic versioning for your version number.
Most briefly: your version number should be of the form X.Y.Z, where X is the major number ("0" for a BCP in progress; "1" for a fully drafted BCP; and "2" or higher for a new version that has introduced a backward-incompatible change), Y is the minor number (for a backward-compatible new feature), and Z is the patch number (for fixing typos and making other clarifications that don't fundamentally change what the BCP means).
But please consult the semantic versioning document for more information and adjust appropriately for the fact that these are textual BCPs, not software.
Please list the person primarily responsible for the BCP, and moving it forward, as the owner. If there are multiple authors, they should be listed on the BCP itself, not on this overview.
BCP use the same standard statuses used on most other *IPs (such as BIPs and SLIPs):
- Process — An internal document for our own usage.
- Standards — A BCP eventually intended to move onto a standards track, such as a BIP, IETF, or W3C.
- Informational — A BCP discussing a wallet issue without explicitly proposing a new feature.
BCPs move through much the same process as other *IPS, with the exception that after finalization we expect them to move onto another track:
- Work Item — A major BCR or BCP draft that has been accepted by BC for further work.
- Mature — A BCP draft that has been fully matured and that we feel is ready for the next step.
- Submitted — A BCP draft that has been submitted to another standards body. (The precise body should be listed as part of this status)
- Deprecated — A BCR or BCP draft that has been superseded by another draft.
Unless otherwise noted (either in this /README.md or in the file's header comments) the contents of this repository are Copyright © 2020 by Blockchain Commons, LLC, and are licensed under the spdx:BSD-2-Clause Plus Patent License.
In most cases, the authors, copyright, and license for each file reside in header comments in the source code. When it does not, we have attempted to attribute it accurately in the table below.
This project is inspired by