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EIPS/eip-4812.md

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+---
+eip: 4812
+title: Exodus
+description: Exodus facilitates the creation of blockchain networks with accounts and transactions.
+author: Antoine Toulmé (@atoulme), Chaals Nevile (@chaals)
+discussions-to: <https://entethalliance.org/contact>, For EEA members only (requires a patent commitment): <https://github.com/entethalliance/testing-wg/issues> 
+status: Draft
+type: Standards Track
+category: ERC
+created: 2021-11-09
+---
+
+## Abstract
+This document specifies how to generate a blockchain environment from a file.
+
+The environment is created based on a chain configuration which can include initial balances and transactions to be processed.
+
+## Motivation
+During testing of distributed systems, we need to load blockchain data and perform some operations.
+
+There is currently no standard in place to codify how to ingest blockchain data. The current solutions involve directly ingesting RLP-encoded data, and that is effectively impossible to read directly which makes it hard to reason about tests.
+
+We aim to facilitate testing and formulation of tests through an explicit format developers can use to represent contracts and transactions in detail, as well as the expected outcomes.
+
+## Specification
+The key words “MUST”, “MUST NOT”, “REQUIRED”, “SHALL”, “SHALL NOT”, “SHOULD”, “SHOULD NOT”, “RECOMMENDED”, “MAY”, and “OPTIONAL” in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119
+
+## Rationale
+The EEA is aiming to standardize Enterprise Ethereum clients, including facets like cross-chain activities and secure deployment of smart contracts. The Testing and Certification Working Group is working in earnest towards creating a test suite that allows developers to certify their implementation is matching the specification of the Enterprise Ethereum standard.
+
+To do so, we require a way to generate workloads and situations on an enterprise blockchain that reconstitutes specific tests.
+
+We have looked at existing solutions:
+* Some clients are able to ingest RLP-encoded blockchain data for testing purposes, but that creates a burden on developers to maintain such data and is not directly viewable, making it difficult to maintain and discuss the data itself.
+* Some clients can ingest specific payloads for components of their architecture, but we are looking to test consensus use cases that require all data such as transactions, accounts and balances.
+
+## Backwards Compatibility
+There is no backwards compatibility issues as this is a net-new process that will run separately from clients and generate blockchain state for them.
+
+## Security Considerations
+
+Some configurations **will** show security problems, to enable testing for them. This is a critical part of the functionality.
+
+## Copyright
+Copyright and related rights waived via [CC0](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/