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Target release	Mercury
Epic	Link to related JIRA epic or feature
Document status
Document owner	Medha Parlikar (Unlicensed)
Designer	Lead designer
Developers	Lead developer
QA	Lead tester

Goals

Ensure that the RChain API's are backwards and forwards compatible. Applications that use the RChain public API's should not break in the event of a system upgrade.
The API should be fast.

Background and strategic fit

JSON-RPC is notoriously poor at supporting updates to the API it implements. We do not want our clients to become tightly coupled to a specific version of our API's.

Supporting documentation:

https://codeclimate.com/blog/choose-protocol-buffers/w

Assumptions

Client applications will use our Node API. We don't want for them to have to re-visit their implementation when the API changes over time.

Requirements

#	Title	User Story	Importance	Notes
1	Client Application	As a client application calling the RChain API, I require that my api calls always work so that my application's functionality does not change out from under me.	Must Have	Additional considerations or noteworthy references (links, issues)
2

User interaction and design

Include any mockups, diagrams or visual designs relating to these requirements.

Questions

Below is a list of questions to be addressed as a result of this requirements document:

Question	Outcome
(e.g. How we make users more aware of this feature?)	Communicate the decision reached

Not Doing

List the features discussed which are out of scope or might be revisited in a later release.