Summary

• ECA aggregates and republishes EIPs and ERCs
  • EIP and ERC are still expected to publish in some fashion
• Relies on "Curators" to make needed edits and participate in EIP/ERC/<future
  org> processes
• No gate-keeping, only lever is to refuse to aggregate and republish a doc
• No jurisdiction over EIP or ERC, similarly not subject to EIP or ERC Process

Overview

Ethereum Community Archives is an organization that aggregates and propagates
specifications and standards for the Ethereum Ecosystem from other processes and
groups.

Rather than acting as a gatekeeper and providing restrictions to what can be
added to a repository the ECA serves as an aggregator and republisher of
specifications, standards, and other documentation. The ECA may even strive to
become the "repository of record" for the community.

What is different from the old EIP and IETF process is that the process will
rely on "curators" to go out and update documents when the ECA does not feel
they are of sufficient quality. Instead of expecting a document author to read
and understand the specs and apply them to the document the ECA will ask
curators to assist the Authors and provide edits and diffs to the documents.

Instead of telling authors they must comply with ECA standards the ECA will ask
for curators to go and assist the authors in bringing their docs to the
standards the ECA desires.

Relationship to Other Organizations and Processes

ECA maintains affiliations with other explicit processes and groups on a
voluntary basis. Either the ECA or the affiliated organization may terminate the
affiliation independently at any time, for any reason, and there is no need for
consent from the counterparty.

When an affiliation exists with another organization the ECA will aggregate and
republish standards and other appropriate documentation in the ECA website.

If an organization disaffiliates with the ECA then the ECA should stop
aggregating and republishing the aggregated documents. When the ECA
disaffiliates with an organization the ECA must stop aggregation and
republishing
of the disaffiliated organization's materials.

The archivists will establish and maintain standards for what organizations it
will accept and seek out affiliations with.

Aggregating and Republishing documents

The ECA determines which affiliated documents and standards to aggregate and
republish. It may be all documents or a subset, and that scoping can change over
the course of the affiliation.

For example, it is not expected that the ECA would republish the ACD's fork
preparation proceedings where client teams give status updates. However, the
specification for the changes the clients are creating would be republished.

The ECA may provide alternate identifiers and titles for affiliated
organizations documents within its own archives.

The ECA should publish the most current and finalized forms of the documents.
Where it republishes an older form in preference to a newer form the ECA should
provide a statement explaining their rationale for preferring the older
specifications.

Charter organizations

The charger organizations are

• EIP - The Ethereum Improvement Process
• ERC - The Ethereum Request for Comments process

other potential members

• CAIP - Chain Agnostic Improvement Proposals
• EEA - Enterprise Ethereum Association
• Any L2/Ethereum Equivalence org that starts up
• Any formal standards org standardizing ethereum activities such as the
  abandoned OASIS/JSON-RPC group

Membership

There are two roles: Archivist and Curator.

Archivist

Archivists are an enumerated group of people who participate in the governance,
execution, and formal outreach of the ECA.

The archivists have jurisdiction over the processes, websites, and repositories
of the ECA. They have no jurisdiction or power over or under any of the
affiliated organizations. Some archivists may be members of affiliated
organizations. Such dual memberships do not obligate those archivists from
acting in other groups, and similarly no such obligations should be extended
from other groups to members who are also ECA Archivists.

Archivists establish the ECA rules and procedures through consensus (which need
not be unanimous). The rules and procedures established need not operate on a
consensus basis.

Curators

ECA Curators are an unenumerated and transient group of volunteers who help with
affiliated groups in preparing and updating their documents so that they are
suitable for archiving.

ECA Curator is more of an activity than a role, anyone updating documents for
the explicit purpose of making them qualified for archiving or improving the
quality of the document for purposes of archiving may call themselves a curator.

ECA Curators must operate within the jurisdiction of the affiliated
organizations and are, in essence, organized volunteers working on behalf of the
ECA to help affiliated organizations.

Curators also serve to make sure the affiliated documents are updated when
implementations change, as well as making sure the affiliated organizations
processes remain healthy by participating where appropriate.

ECA may enumerate curators with titles such as "Distinguished Curator" as well
as recruiting, recognizing, and compensating curators, at the direction of the
Archivists.

As there is no formal admission or enumeration of curators from time to time the
ECA archivists may need to disavow curators. This disavows and disowns actions
done by a person in the name of being an ECA curator. This is the limit of
curator discipline.

An ECA curator may cease to be a curator simply by declaring it or ceasing to
curate documents.