NIPs
நம்Chain Improvement Proposal 
NIP: NIP-1 Title: NIP Purpose and Guidelines Author(s): Ramaguru Radhakrishnan (ramaguru.90@gmail.com) Created: 18-Oct-2020 Type: Process Status: Draft
NIP - NamChain Improvement Proposal (நம்Chain Improvement Proposal)
NamChain Improvement Proposal (NIP) describes the proposed standards for the நம்Chain platform, a design document providing information to the community, or describing a new feature or its processes or environment.
Like Bitcoin and Ethereum Community, we also intend NIP 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 நம்Chain. The NIPs are maintained as text files in a versioned repository, their revision history is the historical record of the feature proposal.
NIP Types
- Standard NIP describes any change that affects most or all நம்Chain implementations, such as a change to the network protocol, a change in block or transaction validity rules, proposed application standards/conventions, or any change or addition that affects the interoperability of applications using நம்Chain. Furthermore Standard NIPs can be broken down into the following categories.
- Core - improvements requiring a consensus fork as well as changes that are not necessarily consensus critical but may be relevant to “core dev” discussions.
- Library - includes improvements around Tesla - நம்Chain’s Library.
- Tools - includes improvements around Newton - நம்Chain’s Tools.
- DLTs - includes improvements around Ein - நம்Chain’s DLTs.
- BIS - application-level standards and conventions, including contract standards such as token standards, library/package formats, wallet formats, and identity standards.
- Process NIP describes a process surrounding நம்Chain or proposes a change to (or an event in) a process. Process NIPs are like Standards NIPs but apply to areas other than the நம்Chain protocol itself. Examples include procedures, guidelines, changes to the decision-making process, and changes to the tools or environment used in நம்Chain development.
- Informational NIP describes an நம்Chain design issue, or provides general guidelines or information to the நம்Chain community, but does not propose a new feature. Informational NIPs do not necessarily represent நம்Chain community consensus or a recommendation, so users and implementers are free to ignore Informational NIPs or follow their advice.
Each NIP should have the following parts:
- Preamble - RFC 822 style headers containing metadata about the NIP, including the NIP number, a short descriptive title (limited to a maximum of 44 characters), and the author details. See below for details.
- Abstract - A short (~200 word) description of the technical issue being addressed.
- Motivation (optional) - The motivation is critical for NIPs that want to change the நம்Chain protocol. It should clearly explain why the existing protocol specification is inadequate to address the problem that the NIP solves. NIP submissions without sufficient motivation may be rejected outright.
- 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 நம்Chain platforms.
- 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 may also provide evidence of consensus within the community, and should discuss important objections or concerns raised during discussion.
- Backwards Compatibility - All NIPs that introduce backwards incompatibilities must include a section describing these incompatibilities and their severity. The NIP must explain how the author proposes to deal with these incompatibilities. NIP submissions without a sufficient backwards compatibility treatise may be rejected outright.
- Test Cases - Test cases for an implementation are mandatory for NIPs that are affecting consensus changes. Other NIPs can choose to include links to test cases if applicable.
- Implementations - The implementations must be completed before any NIP is given status “Final”, but it need not be completed before the NIP is merged as draft. While there is merit to the approach of reaching consensus on the specification and rationale before writing code, the principle of “rough consensus and running code” is still useful when it comes to resolving many discussions of API details.
- Security Considerations - All NIPs must contain a section that discusses the security implications/considerations relevant to the proposed change. Include information that might be important for security discussions, surfaces risks and can be used throughout the life cycle of the proposal. E.g. include security-relevant design decisions, concerns, important discussions, implementation-specific guidance and pitfalls, an outline of threats and risks and how they are being addressed. NIP submissions missing the “Security Considerations” section will be rejected. An NIP cannot proceed to status “Final” without a Security Considerations discussion deemed sufficient by the reviewers.
- Copyright Waiver - All NIPs must be in the public domain.
# NIP Formats and Templates NIPs should be written in markdown format. There is a template to follow.
NIP:Title: Author(s): <list of authors' real names and optionally, email address> Created: <date created on, in ISO 8601 (yyyy-mm-dd) format> Type: <Informational | Library | Tools | DLTs | Process> Status: <Draft | Active | Accepted | Deferred | Rejected | Withdrawn | Final | Superseded> * Requires: * Replaces: * Superseded-By: * Resolution: </pre> # NIP Auxiliary Files NIPs normally may include auxiliary files such as Images and diagrams. Auxiliary files should be included in a subdirectory for that NIP as follows: assets/nip-N-C-ext, where "N" is the NIP number, "C" is a serial number (starting at 1), and "ext" is replaced by the actual file extension. Such that when linking to an image in the NIP, use relative links such as ../assets/eip-1-1-png # Transferring NIP Ownership Occasionally it becomes necessary to transfer ownership of NIPs to other. In general, we’d like to retain the original author as a co-author of the transferred NIP, but that decision is up to the original author. A good reason to transfer ownership is because the original author no longer has the time or interest in updating it or following through with the NIP process, or has fallen off the face of the ‘net (i.e. is unreachable or isn’t responding to email). A bad reason to transfer ownership is because you don’t agree with the direction of the NIP. If you are interested in assuming ownership of an EIP, send a message asking to take over, addressed to both the original author and the EIP editor. If the original author doesn’t respond to email in a timely manner, the EIP editor will make a unilateral decision (it’s not like such decisions can’t be reversed :)). # NIP Editors - Ramaguru Radhakrishnan (@ramagururadhakrishnan) # Style Guide Whenever referring to an NIP by number, it should be written in the hyphenated form NIP-N where N is the NIP’s assigned number. # History This document was derived heavily from Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP) written by written by Amir Taaki & Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) written by Martin Becze, Hudson Jameson, et al. both of these inturn was derived from Python's PEP-0001. In many places text was simply copied and modified. Although the PEP-0001 text was written by Barry Warsaw, Jeremy Hylton, and David Goodger, they are not responsible for its use in the NamChain Improvement Proposal (நம்Chain Improvement Process), and should not be bothered with technical questions specific to நம்Chain or the NIP process. # Copyright Copyright and related rights waived via [CC0](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/). # Citation Please cite this document as: Ramaguru Radhakrishnan, **"NIP-1: NIP Purpose and Guidelines,"** NamChain Improvement Proposal(நம்Chain Improvement Proposal), October 2020. [Online serial].