SEP: 0002
Title: Federation protocol
Author: stellar.org
Status: Final
Created: 2017-10-30
Updated: 2019-10-10
Version 1.1.0
The Stellar federation protocol maps Stellar addresses to more information about a given user. It’s a way for Stellar
client software to resolve email-like addresses such as name*yourdomain.com
into account IDs like:
GCCVPYFOHY7ZB7557JKENAX62LUAPLMGIWNZJAFV2MITK6T32V37KEJU
. Stellar addresses provide an easy way for users to share
payment details by using a syntax that interoperates across different domains and providers.
Stellar addresses are divided into two parts separated by *
, the username and the domain.
For example: bob*stellar.org
:
bob
is the username,stellar.org
is the domain.
The username is limited to printable UTF-8 with whitespace and the following characters excluded: *
,>
. Although of
course the domain administrator can place additional restrictions on usernames of its domain.
Email addresses may be used as the username as the @
symbol is allowed in the username. This allows for using email
addresses as the username of an address when the users username is their email address.
For example: [email protected]*stellar.org
.
Phone numbers may be used as the username. When encoding a phone number as the username the ITU-T recommendations
E.123 and E.164 should be followed. The
phone number should be formatted in international notation with a leading +
as demonstrated in E.123 Section 2.5 to
ensure phone numbers are consistently encoded and are globally unique. Spaces should be omitted.
Format: +<country code><phone number>
For example: +14155550100*stellar.org
.
The domain can be any valid RFC 1035 domain name.
You can use the federation endpoint to look up an account id if you have a stellar address. You can also do reverse federation and look up a stellar addresses from account ids or transaction ids. This is useful to see who has sent you a payment.
Federation requests are HTTP GET requests with the following form:
?q=<string to look up>&type=<name,id,txid>
Supported types:
name
: returns the federation record for the given Stellar address. Example request:https://FEDERATION_SERVER/federation?q=bob*stellar.org&type=name
forward
: Used for forwarding the payment on to a different network or different financial institution. The other parameters of the query will vary depending on what kind of institution is the ultimate destination of the payment and what you as the forwarding anchor supports. Yourstellar.toml
file should specify what parameters you expect in a forward federation request. If you are unable to forward or the other parameters in the request are incorrect you should return an error to this effect. Example requests:https://FEDERATION_SERVER/federation?type=forward&forward_type=bank_account&swift=BOPBPHMM&acct=2382376
https://FEDERATION_SERVER/federation?type=forward&forward_type=remittance_center&first_name=Jhun&last_name=Matahari&address=17A%20Sales&city=Angeles&postal_code=12121&country=PH&mobile=0911111112
if more information needs to be sent through
id
: returns the federation record of the Stellar address associated with the given account ID. In some cases this is ambiguous. For instance if an anchor sends transactions on behalf of its users the account id will be of the anchor and the federation server won’t be able to resolve the particular user that sent the transaction. In cases like that you may need to use txid instead. Example: https://YOUR_FEDERATION_SERVER/federation?q=GD6WU64OEP5C4LRBH6NK3MHYIA2ADN6K6II6EXPNVUR3ERBXT4AN4ACD&type=idtxid
: returns the federation record of the sender of the transaction if known by the server. Example:https://YOUR_FEDERATION_SERVER/federation?q=c1b368c00e9852351361e07cc58c54277e7a6366580044ab152b8db9cd8ec52a&type=txid
The federation server should respond with an appropriate HTTP status code, headers and a JSON response.
You must enable CORS on the federation server so clients can send requests from other sites. The following HTTP header must be set for all federation server responses.
Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *
When a record has been found the response should return 200 OK
HTTP status code and the JSON body with following
fields:
stellar_address
- stellar addressaccount_id
- Stellar public key / account IDmemo_type
- [optional] type of memo to attach to transaction, one oftext
,id
orhash
memo
- [optional] value of memo to attach to transaction, forhash
this should be base64-encoded. This field should always be of typestring
(even whenmemo_type
is equalid
) to support parsing value in languages that don't support big numbers.
Example:
{
"stellar_address": "bob*stellar.org",
"account_id": "GCIBUCGPOHWMMMFPFTDWBSVHQRT4DIBJ7AD6BZJYDITBK2LCVBYW7HUQ",
"memo_type": "id",
"memo": "123"
}
If a redirect is needed the federation server should return 3xx
HTTP status code and immediately redirect the user to
the correct URL using the Location
header.
When a record has not been found 404 Not Found
HTTP status code should be returned.
Every other HTTP status code will be considered an error. The body should contain error details:
{
"error": "extra details provided by the federation server"
}
Federation responses should not be cached. Some organizations may generate random IDs to protect their users’ privacy. Those IDs may change over time.
- Reference Federation server developed by Stellar Development Foundation.
- Go federation client
- JavaScript federation client
- Federation structures