What causes "error marshalling default instantiation policy" in hyperledger/fabric?

Retry the chaincode install/instantiate operation; the failure is usually transient or internal

error marshalling default instantiation policy

Error message

error marshalling default instantiation policy

What it means

GetInstantiationPolicy builds a default instantiation policy (SignedByAnyAdmin of the channel's MSP IDs) and marshals it to protobuf bytes. This error is returned if protoutil.Marshal fails on that generated policy object. In practice it almost never fires because the policy is constructed internally, but it guards against serialization failures.

Source

Thrown at core/scc/lscc/support.go:66

func (s *SupportImpl) GetInstantiationPolicy(channel string, ccpack ccprovider.CCPackage) ([]byte, error) {
	var ip []byte
	var err error
	// if ccpack is a SignedCDSPackage, return its IP, otherwise use a default IP
	sccpack, isSccpack := ccpack.(*ccprovider.SignedCDSPackage)
	if isSccpack {
		ip = sccpack.GetInstantiationPolicy()
		if ip == nil {
			return nil, errors.Errorf("instantiation policy cannot be nil for a SignedCCDeploymentSpec")
		}
	} else {
		// the default instantiation policy allows any of the channel MSP admins
		// to be able to instantiate
		mspids := s.GetMSPIDs(channel)

		p := policydsl.SignedByAnyAdmin(mspids)
		ip, err = protoutil.Marshal(p)
		if err != nil {
			return nil, errors.Errorf("error marshalling default instantiation policy")
		}
	}
	return ip, nil
}

// CheckInstantiationPolicy checks whether the supplied signed proposal
// complies with the supplied instantiation policy
func (s *SupportImpl) CheckInstantiationPolicy(signedProp *pb.SignedProposal, chainName string, instantiationPolicy []byte) error {
	// create a policy object from the policy bytes
	idd := s.GetIdentityDeserializer(chainName)
	if idd == nil {
		return errors.Errorf("error checking chaincode instantiation policy: MSP manager for channel %s not found", chainName)
	}
	npp := cauthdsl.NewPolicyProvider(idd)
	instPol, _, err := npp.NewPolicy(instantiationPolicy)
	if err != nil {
		return err
	}

View on GitHub (pinned to 2736b63f8f)

Solutions

Retry the chaincode install/instantiate operation; the failure is usually transient or internal
Verify channel MSP configuration is valid (mspids list is well-formed)
Update to a patched Fabric version if the marshal error is reproducible

Defensive patterns

Strategy: retry

Validate before calling

// ensure channel MSP IDs are available before defaulting to implicit policy
if len(s.GetMSPIDs(channel)) == 0 {
    return nil, errors.Errorf("no MSP IDs found for channel %s", channel)
}

Try / catch

ip, err := support.GetInstantiationPolicy(channel, ccdata)
if err != nil {
    return fmt.Errorf("failed to get instantiation policy: %w", err)
}

Prevention

Ensure channel MSP configuration is valid before deploy
Retry transient marshal failures
Keep Fabric version current to avoid internal serialization bugs

When it happens

Trigger: Calling GetInstantiationPolicy for a chaincode with no explicit instantiation policy, when the internally generated SignedByAnyAdmin policy cannot be marshalled (e.g. corrupted MSP IDs list or internal protobuf issue).

Common situations: Rare; seen during chaincode install/instantiate flows on channels whose MSP configuration is anomalous, or in forked/patched builds where policy types changed.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of hyperledger/fabric@2736b63f8f (2026-09-04). Data as JSON: /api/errors/c133d9b6976d458e. Report an issue: GitHub.