What causes "received nil proposal response" in hyperledger/fabric?

Retry the endorsement call against a different, healthy peer in the channel

received nil proposal response

Error message

received nil proposal response

What it means

GetOrdererEndpointOfChain sends a GetChannelConfig proposal to an endorser via ProcessProposal. The gRPC call can legally return (nil, nil), which would cause a nil-pointer dereference downstream, so the function explicitly rejects a nil proposal response. It means the endorser returned no response object at all.

Source

Thrown at internal/peer/common/common.go:262

	}

	prop, _, err := protoutil.CreateProposalFromCIS(pcommon.HeaderType_CONFIG, "", invocation, creator)
	if err != nil {
		return nil, errors.WithMessage(err, "error creating GetChannelConfig proposal")
	}

	signedProp, err := protoutil.GetSignedProposal(prop, signer)
	if err != nil {
		return nil, errors.WithMessage(err, "error creating signed GetChannelConfig proposal")
	}

	proposalResp, err := endorserClient.ProcessProposal(context.Background(), signedProp)
	if err != nil {
		return nil, errors.WithMessage(err, "error endorsing GetChannelConfig")
	}

	if proposalResp == nil {
		return nil, errors.New("received nil proposal response")
	}

	if proposalResp.Response.Status != 0 && proposalResp.Response.Status != http.StatusOK {
		return nil, errors.Errorf("error bad proposal response %d: %s", proposalResp.Response.Status, proposalResp.Response.Message)
	}

	// parse config
	channelConfig := &pcommon.Config{}
	if err := proto.Unmarshal(proposalResp.Response.Payload, channelConfig); err != nil {
		return nil, errors.WithMessage(err, "error unmarshalling channel config")
	}

	bundle, err := channelconfig.NewBundle(chainID, channelConfig, cryptoProvider)
	if err != nil {
		return nil, errors.WithMessage(err, "error loading channel config")
	}

	ordererConfig, ok := bundle.OrdererConfig()

View on GitHub (pinned to 2736b63f8f)

Solutions

Retry the endorsement call against a different, healthy peer in the channel
Verify peer and client fabric versions match (v2.x peer vs v2.x client)
Check network path (proxies, ingress) for dropped or truncated gRPC responses
Inspect peer logs at the target endorser for internal errors during ProcessProposal

Example fix

// before
proposalResp, err := endorserClient.ProcessProposal(ctx, signedProp)
if err != nil { return nil, err }
// after
proposalResp, err := endorserClient.ProcessProposal(ctx, signedProp)
if err != nil { return nil, err }
if proposalResp == nil { return nil, errors.New("received nil proposal response") }

Defensive patterns

Strategy: retry

Validate before calling

// ensure endorser client is healthy before use
if endorserClient == nil { return errors.New("endorser client not initialized") }
// optionally ping the peer first via a lightweight proposal

Type guard

if proposalResp == nil || proposalResp.Response == nil {
    return errors.New("endorser returned nil response")
}

Try / catch

resp, err := GetOrdererEndpointOfChain(chainID, dc, signer, cp)
if err != nil {
    if strings.Contains(err.Error(), "nil proposal response") {
        // rotate to another peer and retry
        return retryWithNextPeer(chainID)
    }
    return err
}

Prevention

Target well-known, healthy endorser peers
Keep client and peer fabric versions aligned
Avoid proxies that can truncate gRPC responses

When it happens

Trigger: endorserClient.ProcessProposal returns nil response with a nil error — typically a malformed/degenerate gRPC reply from a misbehaving or incompatible endorser peer.

Common situations: Connecting to a peer that is not a proper endorser, a proxy/load balancer stripping the response, version-mismatched fabric binaries, or an unstable network connection that yields an empty reply.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of hyperledger/fabric@2736b63f8f (2026-09-04). Data as JSON: /api/errors/e5819be141f3c388. Report an issue: GitHub.