ecosystem

Stellar Ecosystem Proposals (SEPs)

SEP Tracks

• Informational — A SEP on the Informational track is one that is open to adoption by the ecosystem, but has not been formally standardized by SDF, and is not endorsed by SDF for adoption. Typically a SEP can start as Informational to gain traction within the ecosystem before moving to the Standards track.
• Standard — A SEP on the Standards track is one that aims for formal standardization and endorsement by SDF for adoption. Typically a SEP Standard has a higher bar towards acceptance, and it requires approval by 2 SDF members of the SEP Team.

SEP Status Terms

• Draft - A SEP that is currently open for consideration and actively being discussed.
• Awaiting Decision — A mature and ready SEP that is ready for approval by the SEP Team. If enough the approval requirements are met by SEP team members, the SEP will move towards FCP. Otherwise, it'll regress to a Draft.
• FCP — A SEP that has entered a Final Comment Period (FCP). After one week has passed, during which any new concerns should be addressed, the SEP's status will become Active.
• Active - An actively maintained SEP that is intended for immediate adoption by the entire ecosystem. Additional updates may be made without changing the SEP number.
• Final - A finalized SEP will not be changed aside from minor errata. For a proposal to be a candidate to be made Final it must be being used in live products.

Additional Statuses

• Deprecated - A SEP that was previously on an active track but has been deprecated and is no longer suggested for use. There may be legacy usage of a deprecated SEP.
• Rejected - A Standards SEP that has been formally rejected by the SEP Team, and will not be implemented.
• Superseded: [New Final SEP] - A SEP that which was previously final but has been superseded by a new, final SEP. Both SEPs should reference each other.

List of Proposals

Number	Title	Author	Track	Status
SEP-0001	stellar.toml specification	SDF	Standard	Active
SEP-0002	Federation Protocol	SDF	Standard	Final
SEP-0004	Tx Status Endpoint	SDF	Standard	Final
SEP-0005	Key Derivation Methods for Stellar Accounts	SDF	Standard	Final
SEP-0007	URI Scheme to facilitate delegated signing	Interstellar	Standard	Final
SEP-0008	Regulated Assets	Interstellar	Standard	Final
SEP-0009	Standard KYC / AML Fields	SDF	Standard	Active
SEP-0010	Stellar Web Authentication	Sergey Nebolsin, Tom Quisel	Standard	Active
SEP-0011	Txrep: Human-Readable Low-Level Representation of Stellar Transactions	David Mazières	Standard	Active
SEP-0012	Anchor/Client Customer Info Transfer	Interstellar	Standard	Active
SEP-0020	Self-verification of validator nodes	Johan Stén	Standard	Active
SEP-0024	Simplified Anchor/Client Interoperability	SDF	Standard	Active
SEP-0028	XDR Base64 Encoding	SDF	Standard	Final

Draft Proposals

Number	Title	Author	Track	Status
SEP-0014	Dynamic Asset Metadata	OrbitLens, Paul Tiplady	Standard	Draft
SEP-0015	Attachment Convention	Interstellar	Standard	Draft
SEP-0016	Account Transfer Permissionless Payment Protocol (@p2p)	Jeremy Rubin	Standard	Draft
SEP-0017	Issuer account funding protocol (CAP-13 Based)	Tom Quisel	Standard	Draft
SEP-0018	Data Entry Namespaces	Mister.Ticot	Standard	Draft
SEP-0019	Bootstrapping Multisig Transaction Submission	Paul Selden, Nikhil Saraf	Standard	Draft
SEP-0021	On-chain signature & transaction sharing	Mister.Ticot	Informational	Draft
SEP-0022	IPFS Support	Samuel B. Sendelbach	Informational	Draft
SEP-0023	Augmented strkey format for multiplexed addresses	David Mazières and Tomer Weller	Standard	Draft

Rejected and Deprecated Proposals

Number	Title	Author	Track	Status
SEP-0003	Compliance Protocol	SDF	Standard	Deprecated
SEP-0006	Anchor/Client Interoperability	SDF	Standard	Deprecated in favor of SEP-24
SEP-0013	DEPOSIT_SERVER proposal	@no, @ant, @manran, @pacngfar	Informational	Rejected

Contribution Process

The Stellar Ecosystem, like most software ecosystems in the world, continues to evolve over time to meet the needs of our network's participants and to drive technology forward into new territory.

Unlike Stellar's Core development (CAPs), Stellar's Ecosystem Proposals are intended to be a more dynamic way of introducing standards and protocols utilized in the ecosystem that are built on top of the Stellar Network. It attempts to take a more lightweight process for approval, and much of its process is inspired by the IETF.

Before contributing, consider the following:

• Choose a track to propose your idea on. The bar for accepting an Informational SEP is much lower than one for a Standard, and allows you to promote the SEP independently to gain feedback and traction before creating a Standard out of it.
• Gather feedback from discussion on the dev mailing list and other forums, and utilize it to begin a draft proposal.
• Follow the proposal process listed below. If you're having difficulty moving the proposal forward, talk to the buddy that's assigned the SEP; they'll often have guidance on how to move things forward, as well as feedback regarding feasibility and how the proposal does or does not align with the Stellar Network's goals.

SEP Process

Pre-SEP (Initial Discussion)

Introduce your idea on the stellar-dev mailing list and other community forums dedicated to Stellar.

• Make sure to gather feedback and alternative ideas — it's useful before putting together a formal draft!
• Consider contacting experts in a particular area for feedback while you're hashing out the details.

Creating a SEP Draft

Draft a formal proposal using the SEP Template, and submit a PR to this repository. You should make sure to adhere to the following:

• Use the following format for the filename of your draft: sep_{shorttitle}.md, for example sep_newaccountdeposit.md
• Make sure to place your SEP in the ecosystem/ folder.
• Include GitHub handles or emails for all authors listed. GitHub handles are preferred.

Finally, submit a PR of your draft via your fork of this repository.

Additional Tips

• If your SEP requires images or other supporting files, they should be included in a subdirectory of the contents folder for that SEP, such as contents/sep_happycoder_b274f73c/. Links should be relative, for example a link to an image from SEP-X would be ../contents/sep_happycoder_b274f73c/image.png.

Draft: Merging & Further Iteration

From there, the following process will happen:

• A SEP buddy is assigned and will merge your PR if you properly followed the steps above.
  • They'll rename the above files to the latest SEP draft number before merging in the PR.
  • They'll provide initial feedback, and help pull in any subject matter experts that will help in pushing the SEP towards a final disposition.
• You should continue the discussion of the draft SEP on the mailing list to gather additional feedback. We welcome any additional PRs that iterate on the draft.

Draft -> Awaiting Decision -> Final Comment Period (FCP)

• When you're ready, you should submit a PR changing the status in the draft to Awaiting Decision.
• A SEP buddy is assigned from the SEP team. They'll provide any additional feedback, and help pull in any subject matter experts and SEP team members that will help in pushing the SEP towards a final disposition.
  • For the Informational Track, the SEP enters FCP when 2 members of the SEP Team approve the pull request.
  • For the Standards Track, the SEP enters FCP when 3 members of the SEP team approve the pull request, 2 of whom must be representatives of SDF.
  • The SEP buddy (the PR assignee) is responsible for including members of the SEP team who are subject experts on the SEP being discussed; however, you are free to pull in feedback without going through your buddy. The SEP buddy may also bring it up at an upcoming protocol meeting.
  • If any SEP has major concerns (typically around security) from a SEP Team or CAP Core Team member, the concerns must be addressed before moving it forward; otherwise, it will be set back to Draft, or if fundamentally broken, to Rejected.
  • It should take no more than 2 weeks to move a SEP out of Awaiting Decision.
• Once a SEP has been approved, it goes into FCP which is broadcast to the protocol meeting members along with the mailing list.

FCP -> Active

• If no major concerns are brought up, the SEP is marked as Active by your SEP buddy.
• Ideally there will be a reference implementation exhibiting the behavior and value of the SEP before moving to active state.
• Active SEPs should be brought into production by ecosystem members.
• Minor changes may be made as more implementations are brought online highlighting any edge cases.

Active -> Final

• Once the SEP team determines that an active SEP is complete, proven, and won't be extended, the SEP can move to Final status.
• This promotion can only occur once there are multiple live implementations being used in production to ensure any edge cases or incompatibilities are found.
• No changes will be made to a finalized SEP aside from fixing minor errata.
• Much consideration should be given before moving to Final status, it is OK for SEPs to live in Active status for a long time.

Regression

• It is possible for a SEP to move from Active to Draft or Deprecated if it is never adopted, or is abandoned by the community.
• Regression of an active SEP occurs via the same process as a proposal (Draft -> Awaiting Decision -> FCP -> Deprecated)

SEP Team Members

SEP Team: Tomer (SDF), Nikhil (SDF) Tom Q. (SDF), Michael (SDF), Alex (SDF), orbitlens, David (SDF), Jed (SDF)