Open Standard
Built in public. Owned by everyone.¶
What "open standard" means in practice¶
An open standard is a specification that anyone can read, implement, audit, and improve โ without asking for permission, paying a licence fee, or joining a proprietary programme.
The Stablecoin Stack is an open standard in the fullest sense:
- The formal specification (SS-001) is published in full, covering every component, data structure, cryptographic convention, and conformance requirement.
- The reference implementation โ Settlement Contract, Broadcast Layer, Browser Wallet Extension, Event Explorer โ is published under the Apache 2.0 licence.
- The conformance requirements are public. Any implementation can be audited against them by any party.
- There are no proprietary extensions, no closed test suites, and no tollgates on the information needed to build a compliant implementation.
This is not a marketing position. It is an architectural commitment.
The Fabric Payment Standards Foundation¶
The Stablecoin Stack is specified and maintained by the Fabric Payment Standards Foundation โ an open organisation whose mission is to publish payment infrastructure standards that benefit participants, not intermediaries.
The Foundation operates on a simple premise: open standards lead to better outcomes for merchants, payers, and the payments industry. Better outcomes require businesses to adopt those standards. The Foundation's role is to make adoption as straightforward as possible.
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What the Foundation does¶
Publishes and maintains the Stablecoin Stack specification. Operates reference implementations. Maintains a public registry of conformant deployments. Coordinates community review of proposed changes. Keeps the specification and all supporting material free, forever.
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What the Foundation does not do¶
Own or operate any commercial payment processor. Earn fees on transactions processed by deployments of the stack. Restrict who can deploy a conformant implementation. Hold a privileged position in any deployed instance of the infrastructure.
Visit the Foundation Foundation Community
The RFC portal¶
Specification governance does not live on GitHub. The Foundation operates a dedicated RFC (Request for Comments) portal โ the authoritative hub for everything related to the specification lifecycle.
The RFC portal handles:
- Public RFC submissions โ anyone can propose a change, extension, or new specification.
- Public comment periods โ every major proposed change is open for structured community feedback before adoption.
- Published specifications โ finalised specifications are hosted and versioned here, permanently.
- Specification history โ every version of every specification is preserved and accessible.
GitHub is used for code โ the reference implementation, tooling, SDKs. Governance is the RFC portal.
The specification series¶
The Stablecoin Stack is documented in a series of formal specifications. Each covers a specific component or interface.
| Spec | Status | Covers |
|---|---|---|
| SS-001 | Published | The full system โ architecture, cryptographic conventions, Settlement Contract interface, end-to-end payment flow, security model |
| SS-002 | Published | Wallet-gateway interface specification โ the WebSocket protocol between wallet clients and the payment gateway |
| SS-003 | Planned | Broadcast Layer internal protocol |
| SS-004 | Planned | Checkout Engine API โ merchant-facing session and charge management |
| SS-005 โ SS-008 | Planned | Individual microservice interface specifications |
| SS-009 | Planned | Client Wallet certification programme |
All specifications follow Semantic Versioning. Backwards-incompatible changes require a major version increment, a 30-day community review period, and a published migration guide.
How conformance works¶
A conformant Stablecoin Stack deployment satisfies all requirements marked MUST in the relevant specification sections.
Conformance is self-declared โ there is no certification body. The Foundation intends to publish a conformance test suite that allows deployments to be independently verified.
Partial conformance is also valid and explicitly supported. A conformant Settlement Contract can be used with a non-reference Checkout Engine. A conformant wallet can interact with any processor that satisfies the specified gateway interface.
For auditors
The formal specification (SS-001) uses RFC 2119 terminology throughout: MUST, MUST NOT, SHOULD, RECOMMENDED, MAY. Every normative requirement is clearly marked. Auditors can assess conformance against the published specification without any additional documentation from the implementer.
The cryptographic foundations¶
The Stablecoin Stack builds on established, widely deployed cryptographic standards โ nothing experimental, nothing proprietary.
| Standard | Role in the Stack |
|---|---|
| ECDSA / secp256k1 | All payment signatures โ the same curve used in standard internet PKI and financial messaging |
| EIP-712 | Typed data signing โ binds every signature to a specific contract, chain, and data type, preventing cross-domain replay |
| ERC-2612 | Off-chain permit mechanism โ enables gasless payment authorisation |
| TLS 1.3 / mTLS | Transport security for merchant-to-processor and wallet-to-gateway communication |
Versioning and governance¶
- Changes are proposed through the RFC portal, publicly.
- Major changes require a 30-day community comment period and a published migration guide before adoption.
- The specification is the authoritative document โ not a blog post, not a press release.
- All versions are preserved permanently. Implementers always have access to the exact document they built against.
Support the Foundation¶
The Foundation is an independent, non-commercial organisation. Its work โ publishing specifications, maintaining reference implementations, operating the RFC portal and community platform โ is sustained by the community it serves.
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Become a sponsor¶
Organisations that depend on open payment standards can support the Foundation's work through a sponsorship membership. Sponsors are listed publicly and recognised in the specification changelog.
Sponsorship membership โ๐
Make a donation¶
Individual donations โ of any size โ directly fund specification work, community infrastructure, and the continued availability of all Foundation resources at no cost.
Donate to the Foundation โContributing to the specification¶
The Foundation actively welcomes contributors across all profiles. Every part of the specification โ from the normative protocol requirements to the prose explanations โ improves through implementation experience, security review, and community feedback.
- Protocol reviewers โ read the specification, identify ambiguities, propose clarifications via the RFC portal.
- Implementers โ build conformant components, report issues, improve the reference implementations.
- Security auditors โ review the settlement contract, the cryptographic conventions, and the security model.
- Legal and regulatory professionals โ help map the stack's properties to regulatory frameworks in specific jurisdictions.