Publish ledger specifications as CIPs and explicitly endorse the process

[abailly-iohk]

The ledger is obviously a critical part of the Cardano as it embodies most of the rules governing how various parties interact with each other through the network. While there is a Ledger category, it seems the ledger project does not explicitly endorse the CIP process, along the lines of what Plutus project did in CIP-35. Following revised CIP-0001, there's now explicitly a section on project's endorsement: https://github.com/cardano-foundation/CIPs/tree/master/CIP-0001#project-enlisting

Also, it seems to me it could be worthwhile to publish all ledger specifications, past, present and future as CIPs, effectively replacing this list of PDFs/CDDLs

by a list of CIPs.

[abailly-iohk]

Plus, this would lead the repository to display a nice badge 😂

[JaredCorduan]

cardano-foundation/CIPs#372 (comment)

☝️ relevant

[JaredCorduan]

@abailly-iohk are you thinking one CIP per historical ledger era? With links in each CIP to the up-to-date CI build of the PDF? And links to the CDDL specs in this repo? I don't think we would want to get rid of the table in this readme.

[abailly-iohk]

are you thinking one CIP per historical ledger era?

Yes.

With links in each CIP to the up-to-date CI build of the PDF?

For example. And/Or the source code, does not matter much.

And links to the CDDL specs in this repo?

Yes.

I don't think we would want to get rid of the table in this readme.

Your call, we could add a column with the proper link. Essentially, the CIPs could contain a summary with link to stable URLs.

My idea is that by putting those specifications (more) in the limelight, we make it possible for them to be replicated, challenged, tested, extended, inspected, furthering the goal of turning Cardano into a proper Common

[abailly-iohk]

[JaredCorduan]

I've put this up to endorse the CIP process: cardano-foundation/CIPs#456

I'm still on the fence about how best to handle "ledger eras" in the CIP process. I feel like they are closer to releases than CIP-able 🍵 things...