IPLD Schemas Goals

  1. Provide a reasonable, easy to use, general type system for declaring useful properties about data.
  2. Compose nicely over the IPLD Data Model: Schemas should be usable with any data format you can build an IPLD Codec for.
  3. Be efficient to verify: predictable; roughly linear in the size of the data and Schema; and absolutely not turing complete.
  4. Be language-agnostic: many compatible implementations of the Schema tooling should exist, as well as bindings for many languages.
  5. Assist rather than obstruct migration: we expect to be working with existing data; we need to work well on this case.
  6. Be a tool that adds value in collaboration and documentation: Schemas should provide a natural place for API documentation, and be a reasonable design literature.

In total: Make developing decentralized & distributed applications easier, clearer, and more robust.