[SBU] Membership Types

[vinomaster]

Problem/Concern

Our Consortium intends to offer entities the ability to participant within two categories: members and subscribers. While we can easily describe Founding Members, and Stewards -- we need to establish a clear and concise definition for those entities who can write to the ledger.

The Sovrin Glossary discusses two types of Write Transaction Roles: Transaction Endorser and Transaction Author. In our Governance Framework these two roles are the responsibility of a single entity.

1. Do we drop Transaction Endorser and expand the role of Transaction Author?
2. Do we drop Transaction Author and expand the role of Transaction Endorser?
3. Do we introduce a new term to avoid confusion with Sovrin Glossary?

• link to problem content

Proposed Solution

I (@vinomaster) currently favor the introduction of a new term but I am open for discussion. My preference at this juncture is to derive from SGFv1 terminology and use Trust Anchor.

Membership Category	Membership Type	Validator Node Hosting Required	Authorized for Ledger Writes
Annual Member	Founding Member	Yes	Yes - Unlimited
Annual Member	Steward	Yes	Yes - Unlimited
Subscriber	Trust Anchor	No	Yes - Limited by Subscription Plan

[vinomaster]

From a process perspective this implies the following:

1. TRUSTEE onboards DID of Annual Members to Ledger in STEWARD role.
2. TRUSTEE onboards DID of Annual Members to Ledger in TRUST ANCHOR role.
3. TRUSTEE onboards DID of Subscriber Members to Ledger in TRUST ANCHOR role.

NOTE: Step 2 can also be done by STEWARD to onboard themselves but we MAY want to keep things simple and make these configuration tasks the responsibility of the TRUSTEE role.

[vinomaster]

Can a TRUSTEE throttle or specify the quality (limit) of writes allowed by a TRUST ANCHOR?

[vinomaster]

Current operating assumption for the code in HL-Indy is that a TRUST ANCHOR is an alias for a TRANSACTION ENDORSER.

[vinomaster]

In followup to the throttling question above - Indy config does not currently support such a config setting.

However, a Transaction Endorser (TE) (a.k.a.: TRUST ANCHOR must Endorse all transactions written to a ledger by a TRANSACTION AUTHOR, so the TE currently has the ability to limit the number of transactions by not signing their txns for them. This means we would need a special TRUST ANCHOR code for Subscriber plans. The code would need to interface with the Membership Management DB to determine limits and usage.

[vinomaster]

Will Indy Permission Model support Unlimited/Limited write configuration policies? Assumption is YES; Question for our Technical Policies should be what are the requirements.

ToDo: @lynnbendixsen, Bharat, @vinomaster to discuss and propose herein.

[vinomaster]

Proposed Questions - Answered

1. Do we drop Transaction Endorser and expand the role of Transaction Author? NO
2. Do we drop Transaction Author and expand the role of Transaction Endorser? NO
3. Do we introduce a new term to avoid confusion with Sovrin Glossary? NO

We will accept the roles and definitions of Transaction Author and Transaction Endorser as per the Sovrin Glossary.

Revised Solution

Membership Category	Membership Type	Validator Node Hosting Required	Authorized for Ledger Writes
Annual Member	Founding Member	Yes	Yes - Unlimited
Annual Member	Steward	Yes	Yes - Unlimited
Subscriber	Transaction Endorser	No	Yes - Limited by Subscription Plan

[vinomaster]

Update text to convey the noition that Stewards and Subscribers have the ROLE of Transaction Endorser..

[vinomaster]

Fixed at commit 868b7ee http://sbu.sovrin.verify-creds.com/gf_info/membership/