This repo holds RFCs for the Indy project. We call them HIPEs (Hyperledger Indy Project Enhancements, pronounced like "hype" for short). They describe important topics (not minor details) that we want to standardize across the Indy ecosystem.

See the HIPE Index for a current listing of all HIPEs and their statuses.

See this note for comments about how Hyperledger Indy relates to Hyperledger Aries.

HIPEs are for developers building on Indy. They don't provide guidance on how Indy implements features internally; individual Indy repos have design docs for that.

HIPEs go through a standard lifecycle:

To propose a HIPE, use these instructions to raise a PR against the repo. Proposed HIPEs are considered a "work in progress", even after they are merged. In other words, they haven't been endorsed by the community yet, but they seem like reasonable ideas worth exploring.

To get a HIPE accepted, build consensus for your HIPE on chat and in community meetings. An accepted HIPE is incubating on a standards track; the community has decided to polish it and is exploring or pursuing implementation.

To get a HIPE adopted, socialize and implement. A HIPE gets this status once it has significant momentum--when implementations accumulate, or when the mental model it advocates has begun to permeate our discourse. In other words, adoption is acknowledgment of a de facto standard.

To refine a HIPE, propose changes to it through additional PRs. Typically these changes are driven by experience that accumulates during or after adoption. Minor refinements that just improve clarity can happen inline with lightweight review. Status is still ADOPTED.

Significant refinements require a superseding document; the original HIPE is superseded with a forwarding hyperlink, not replaced.

This repository is licensed under an Apache 2 License. It is protected by a Developer Certificate of Origin on every commit. This means that any contributions you make must be licensed in an Apache-2-compatible way, and must be free from patent encumbrances or additional terms and conditions. By raising a PR, you certify that this is the case for your contribution.

For more instructions about contributing, see Contributing.

The structure and a lot of the initial language of this repository was borrowed from Rust HIPE . Their good work has made the setup of this repository much quicker and better than it otherwise would have been. If you are not familiar with the Rust community, you should check them out.