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observation-of-state.md

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Verifiable Observation of State

  • RFC: 01-003
  • Authors: Allison Irvin, Dileban Karunamoorthy, Ermyas Abebe, Venkatraman Ramakrishna
  • Status: Draft
  • Since: 13-Aug-2020

Summary

  • An observer, also called a remote agent or external client, is a non-participant of a ledger - they are external to a committee or community maintaining a ledger.
  • Observers can however receive state that can be verified
  • The ability to observe and verify state on remote ledgers is the basis for desiging an interoperable protocol.

Observers are Non-Participants

Neither run full nodes nor have a valid identity recognized by the maintainers of a ledger. Observers differ from participants of a ledger, including those who don't run fulls nodes, in the following ways:

  • Observers don't run full nodes
  • Observers may not have complete knowledge of all maintainers of state.
  • Observers may not have knowledge of policies governing the state.
  • Observers don't participate in the governance process.
  • Unlike internal participants, observers are not signatories to state.

Required Further Discussion

  • Internal client, in the following, implies that no member of the client's org maintains a full-node.
  • Perhaps there is little use in drawing a distinction between observers and internal clients who don't run full nodes.
  • If the ledger is public, the two are identitical.
  • If the ledger is permissioned:
    • The maintainers of state control access and visibility of state to both internal clients and observers.
    • Observers have identities, just like the internal counterparts, just not issued by the maintainers.
    • Observers must be carefully vetted just like internal clients.
  • Internal clients exist to transact on the network, i.e. they are signatories of state concerning them.
  • State changes by observers are carried out by a participant, on behalf of the observer.
  • The distinction gets blurry if networks are based entirely on an identity system such as SSI.

"Destination" Networks are Observers

  • TODO: We need a better term than "destination" (e.g. consumer/consuming network)
  • Destination networks are observers with access to views projected by a ("source") network.