TIP: 0001
Title: TIP Purpose and Guidelines
Authors: Robert Konsdorf <[email protected]>
Status: Draft
Type: Informational
Created: 2018-07-30
TIP stands for Telos Improvement Proposal but can also seen as an improvement protocol. A TIP is a design document providing information to the Telos community, or describing a new feature for Telos or its processes or environment. The TIP should provide a concise technical specification of the feature or the idea and a rationale for it. It may not only describe technical improvements but also document best-practises and recommendations.
We intend TIPs to be the primary mechanisms for proposing new features, for collecting community input on an issue, and for documenting the design decisions that have gone into Telos. The TIP author is responsible for building consensus within the community and documenting dissenting opinions.
Because the TIPs are maintained as text files in a versioned repository, their revision history is the historical record of the feature proposal.
There are two kinds of TIPs:
- An Informational TIP describes a Telos design issue, or provides general guidelines or information to the Telos community, but does not propose a new feature, protocol change or any other modification. Informational TIPs do not necessarily represent a Telos community consensus or recommendation, so users and implementors are free to ignore Informational TIPs or follow their advice. Examples would be best-practises or recommendations.
- A Protocol Upgrade TIP describes any change that affects most or all Telos implementations, such as a change to the protocol, a change in block or transaction validity rules, or any change or addition that affects the interoperability of applications using Telos.
People wishing to submit TIPs first should propose their idea as github issue first. After discussion you will be assigned a number for the TIP and can send a pull request for your draft. Once consensus among discussion participants is reached, the status can be switched to accepted. From this time on, major changes of the document will not be permitted.
If the proposal requires a protocol upgrade, the proposal is considered implemented only if shareholders have approved a corresponding worker or hard fork proposal. Informational TIPs can only reach the accepted state since their implementation is not enforced by the blockchain.
We are fairly liberal with listing TIP drafts here since the final decision of its actual implementation is made solely by Telos shareholders via approval voting.
It is highly recommended that a single TIP contain a single key proposal or new idea. Small enhancements or patches often don't need a TIP and can be injected into the Telos development work flow with a patch submission to the Telos issue tracker. The more focused the TIP, the more successful it tends to be. The TIP editor reserves the right to reject TIP proposals if they appear too unfocused or too broad. If in doubt, split your TIP into several well-focused ones.
Vetting an idea publicly before going as far as writing a TIP is meant to save the potential author time. Many ideas have been brought forward for changing Telos that have been rejected for various reasons. Asking the Telos community first if an idea is original helps prevent too much time being spent on something that is guaranteed to be rejected based on prior discussions (searching the internet does not always do the trick). It also helps to make sure the idea is applicable to the entire community and not just the author. Just because an idea sounds good to the author does not mean it will work for most people in most areas where Telos is used.
Following a discussion, the proposal should be sent to the Telos developers and the TIP editors with the draft TIP. This draft must be written in TIP style as described below, else it will be sent back without further regard until proper formatting rules are followed.
If the TIP editor approves, he will assign the TIP a number, label it, give it status "Draft", and add it to the git repository. The TIP editor will not unreasonably deny a TIP. Reasons for denying TIP status include duplication of effort, being technically unsound, not providing proper motivation or addressing backwards compatibility, or not in keeping with the Telos philosophy.
The TIP author may update the Draft as necessary in the git repository. Updates to drafts may also be submitted by the author as pull requests.
For a TIP to be accepted it must meet certain minimum criteria. It must be a clear and complete description of the proposed enhancement. The enhancement must represent a net improvement. The proposed implementation, if applicable, must be solid and must not complicate the protocol unduly.
Once a TIP has been published, the reference implementation must be completed. When the reference implementation is complete and accepted by the shareholders via approval voting, the status will be changed to "Accepted". A TIP can also be "Rejected" by shareholders.
Furthermore, a TIP can be assigned status "Deferred". The TIP author or editor can assign the TIP this status when no progress is being made on the TIP. Once a TIP is deferred, the TIP editor can re-assign it to draft status.
TIPs can also be superseded by a different TIP, rendering the original obsolete. This is intended for Informational TIPs, where version 2 of an API can replace version 1.
Each TIP should have the following parts:
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Preamble -- RFC 822 style headers containing meta-data about the TIP, including the TIP number, a short descriptive title (limited to a maximum of 44 characters), the names, and optionally the contact info for each author, etc.
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Abstract -- a short (~200 word) description of the technical issue being addressed.
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Copyright/public domain -- Each TIP must either be explicitly labelled as placed in the public domain (see this TIP as an example) or licensed under the Open Publication License.
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Motivation -- The motivation is critical for TIPs that want to change the Telos protocol. It should clearly explain why the existing protocol specification is inadequate to address the problem that the TIP solves. TIP submissions without sufficient motivation may be rejected outright.
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Rationale -- The rationale fleshes out the specification by describing what motivated the design and why particular design decisions were made. It should describe alternate designs that were considered and related work, e.g. how the feature is supported in other languages. The rationale should provide evidence of consensus within the community and discuss important objections or concerns raised during discussion.
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Specification -- The technical specification should describe the syntax and semantics of any new feature. The specification should be detailed enough to allow competing, interoperable implementations for any of the current Telos platforms.
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Discussion -- The TIP shall include a discussion on positive and negative effects on the Telos ecosystem shall it be accepted by shareholders. This section is supposed to be the most important section for shareholders to grasp the full impact of the TIP and help shareholders to make a decision.
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Summary for Shareholders -- Most TIPs will probably be of technical nature. However, many shareholders are not as technical as the author of a particular TIP. This non-technical paragraph serves as a place which can be used to to interact with shareholders and help them form their opinion. It is not meant to be a marketing driven paragraph to convince shareholders to vote for or against a proposal, though.
TIPs should be written in mediawiki or markdown format. Image files should be included in a subdirectory for that TIP. A template including the header preamble is provided in this repository.
The current TIP editors are:
- Robert Konsdorf [email protected]
- Douglas Horn [email protected]
- James Davis [email protected]
The editors don't pass judgement on TIPs. We merely do the administrative & editorial part.
Many TIPs are written and maintained by developers with write access to the Telos codebase. The TIP editors monitor TIP changes, and correct any structure, grammar, spelling, or markup mistakes we see.
For each new TIP that comes in an editor does the following:
- Read the TIP to check if it is ready: sound and complete. The ideas must make technical sense, even if they don't seem likely to be accepted.
- The title should accurately describe the content.
- Edit the TIP for language (spelling, grammar, sentence structure, etc.), markup (for reST TIPs), code style (examples should match TIP 8 & 7).
Once the TIP is ready for the repository it should be submitted as a "pull request" to the [https://github.com/Telo-Foundation/tips] repository on GitHub where it may get further feedback.
The TIP editor will:
- Assign a TIP number (almost always just the next available number, but sometimes it's a special/joke number, like 666 or 3141) in the pull request comments.
- Merge the pull request when the author is ready (allowing some time for further peer review).
- List the TIP in [[README.mediawiki]]
- Send email back to the TIP author with next steps (post to Telos mailing list).
This document was forked from Bitshare's BSIP, which is derived heavily from Python's PEP-0001 and Bitcoin BIP-0001. In many places text was simply copied and modified. Although the PEP-0001/BIP-0001 text was written by Barry Warsaw, Jeremy Hylton, and David Goodger, they are not responsible for its use in the Telos Improvement Process, and should not be bothered with technical questions specific to Telos or the TIP process. Please direct all comments to the TIP editors.