Forest OpenRPC FIPs

[aatifsyed]

Forest's 2024 roadmap includes the following:

Objective 2: Increase network governance contributions
...
Key results of authoring 5 FIPs, with 2 of them being accepted...

The proposed timeline includes the following:

2. Q2

   Propose FIP to specify default JSONRPC interface

3. Q3

   Propose FIP to specify Miner Interface

Forest has attempted to use the results of calling the rpc.discover JSON-RPC method on Lotus to generate a compatible API, but failed¹:

• the returned items are not always correct
• the returned items do not contain schemas for the required parameters

We have therefore manually implemented our RPC API from scratch.

The interface definition language for JSON-RPC interfaces is OpenRPC: https://open-rpc.org/, which can be the basis for a FIP.

We should not maintain a separate OpenRPC document for our API - it can be generated from our existing code.

This issue tracks

• initial reflection work feat: initial implementation of OpenRPC definitions for methods #4033
• migration of endpoints [tracking] RPC refactoring wishlist #4032
• FIP: Client Interoperability OpenRPC #4365
• Q3 FIP authoring

Footnotes

1. Lotus' OpenRPC definitions are inaccurate #3668
   We also tried codegen from go:
   https://github.com/ChainSafe/forest/tree/5a05dd184a6e8f9eaeb21c8f122b3f9a0b89b974/codegen ↩

[aatifsyed]

End goal

• We have Lotus' seal of approval™️ on the below
• A complete OpenRPC (JSON) document for a subset of "client interoperability methods"
• Text of a FIP

Current status

• forest.openrpc
  • We believe this is structurally correct, given
    • snapshot testing
• lotus.openrpc
  • We believe this is structurally incomplete

Outstanding work

• [low risk] @ansermino will document each method
  • Currently in Notion, will be in Google Docs for Lotus review
• [medium risk] @aatifsyed will find the structural inconsistencies between forest.openrpc and
  lotus.openrpc as a seed for discussion
• @whom? choosing which methods belong under "client interoperability methods", which
  will synthesise requirements from the following stakeholders
  • Boost (have a list)
  • Curio (have a list)
  • Web3Mine?
  • Glif (have a list)
  • Lotus?
• Code changes in forest
  • migrate descriptions to forest
  • add tagging functionality to trait RpcEndpoint
• New repo for spec
• stretch: generate docs
  • super stretch: nice interactive docs against a public endpoint