This the home page for a draft of the ToIP Technical Architecture Specification, a proposed Draft Deliverable of the TSWG developed by the Technical Architecture Task Force. The Working Draft of this specification will proceed through three stages:

1. Google doc: For ease of drafting and commenting during the early Draft Deliverable stage, the spec is initially starting as this Google doc. <== THIS IS THE CURRENT DRAFT FOR REVIEWS AND CONTRIBUTIONS
2. Wiki page: Once the Google doc version of the spec is reasonably stable, it will likely move here to this page for final review and approval as a Working Group Approved Deliverable. NOTE: This step may be skipped if we decide to move the Google doc draft directly to GitHub.
3. GitHub Markdown file: No later than when we have a call for consensus on a Working Group Approved Deliverable, the spec will be converted into a Markdown document and moved into a ToIP GitHub repo.

Contributors

To comply with the intellectual property rights protections in the charter of the ToIP Foundation (as required by all Joint Development Foundation projects hosted the Linux Foundation), all contributors to this Pre-Draft Deliverable MUST be current members of the ToIP Foundation. The following contributors each certify that they meet this requirement:

• Darrell O'Donnell, Continuum Loop
• Drummond Reed, Evernym
• Wenjing Chu , Futurewei
• Tim Bouma, Individual
• Isaac Henderson, Individual
• <add your name here>

Other contributors MUST also add their name and membership affiliation to the Google doc or wiki page version of the spec as it proceeds through development.

Terminology

In this document, the key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED",  "MAY", and "OPTIONAL", when appearing in ALL CAPITALS, are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119.

All other terms in bold will be defined in one or more of the ToIP glossaries in a process being defined by the ToIP Concepts and Terminology Working Group.

Purpose

The purpose of this specification is to define the overall architectural requirements for each of the four layers of the ToIP stack and how they are abstracted from the layer below. This specification will lay the overarching foundation for four more future ToIP specifications—one for each layer of the stack—that will specify detailed interoperability requirements for each layer. This TF will be specifically focused on adapting the original Hyperledger RFC defining the ToIP stack while at the same time reflecting lessons learned from the development of the Design Principles for the ToIP Stack. Note: this specification is intended to serve as a direct a counterpart to the ToIP Governance Architecture Specification deliverable from the GSWG Governance Architecture TF.

Deliverables

The deliverable of this Task Force is the ToIP Technical Architecture Specification—a specification of the overall architectural requirements for each of the four layers of the ToIP stack and how they are abstracted from the layer below. It is anticipated that this specification will lay the overarching foundation for four more future ToIP specifications—one for each layer of the stack—that will specify detailed interoperability requirements for each layer.

Motivations

For complete background on the motivations for development of the ToIP stack and why it consists of two halves—the ToIP Technology Stack and ToIP Governance Stack—please see the following documents:

• The original Hyperledger RFC defining the ToIP stack.
• The Introduction to ToIP white paper (original version; draft second-generation version)
• Design Principles for the ToIP Stack (draft version)

PLACEHOLDER for Working Draft Specification 

Once the Google doc version of the specification is sufficiently complete, the specification will move here for final review.

DISCUSSION AREA

This area is for posting and discussing topics relevant to this Task Force.