RE: Just off the wire

… with respect to the openness for innovation I propose to re-use the phrasing ‘creating a level playing field’ for players in the ecosystem. Nothing better for a new entrant, when they meet such ‘level playing field’, rather than having to struggle against proprietary systems that have already established themselves in many points. I would explicitly include digital currencies with this notion to save us a few of these discussions.

Cheers,
                Jörg

From: Adrian Hope-Bailie [mailto:adrian@hopebailie.com]
Sent: Montag, 3. November 2014 12:36
To: Joseph Potvin
Cc: Stephane Boyera; Web Payments
Subject: Re: Just off the wire

+1

Comments on that post make it clear that the motivations and work of the W3C is entirely mis-understood
(Not that I'd read too much into blog comments but hey...)

On 1 November 2014 14:40, Joseph Potvin <jpotvin@opman.ca<mailto:jpotvin@opman.ca>> wrote:
+1
Stephane, it might be useful for the W3C to issue its own "media advisory" to frame things for bloggers/journalists. It is, in fact, rather difficult for those who are tangential to the structured and contextually-constrained W3C process to write about it in a way that will map fully to how it ought to have been said, in the views of direct participants.
Joseph Potvin


On Sat, Nov 1, 2014 at 7:11 AM, Stephane Boyera <boyera@w3.org<mailto:boyera@w3.org>> wrote:

Was kind of confused after reading that!
in case you want to know, I'm also confused. We had a good interview with the guy, but the overall output is misleading in many ways imho.
Obviously the point that anything will be done before sept 2017 is a complete misunderstanding. This is the date of the end of the group.

the message I've tried to make and didn't get through is that:
*the group is not setup to standardize bitcoin or crypto-currencies in general
*the objective is to enable more easily payments with bitcoin and alike as a payment instrument, together with other legacy instruments
*the group is likely to focus first on the major issues e-commerce is facing today: fraud and card abandonment. This is were the need is, this is were the demand is and this is were we have resources in the group as of now. wallet is one way for of adressing this

I'm surely convinced that bitcoin and crypto-currencies are the major innovation in payment in the last decade. But at this point in time, I feel it is still in the innovation space, and not yet in the standardization space. I'm sure the time will come, but I've not seen yet any major player coming to the group with specific needs for standardization.

steph
I do feel that the charter and use cases are underweight crypto
currencies.  Those document read like the group is unaware either that
crypto currencies exist, or that it is the major innovation payments in
the last decade.  Not all together accurate, but neither a million miles
away from the mark.

It's not all that clear how much of a role there is for crypto currency
work in this group, or how welcome it would be.  As someone working in
this area, I'd like to follow this work, but am unsure how much or how
little to participate in the core discussion.

The piece didnt really go in to the fact that very few crypto firms have
engaged the payments group.  Either as W3C members, as individuals on
the mailing list (although Amir has posted a few times), or at the
workshop.  This group has been publicized well on bitcoin mailing lists.

The web is generally open ended enough for there to be a place in the
standard for crypto currencies, even though it's not explicitly stated.

Personally I will probably take 80% of the work done here, and create
20% a new standard that should be closely compatible with w3c payments,
work with bitcoin and other cryptos, and hopefully be a basis for v2 of
the spec.  But that's probably looking at sometime closer to 2020 ...
hopefully more btc people will engage during this time, indeed, I've had
conversations with core devs in the last week about a documenting
RESTful APIs which are starting to go into the core in the next weeks.


--
Stephane Boyera        stephane@w3.org<mailto:stephane@w3.org>
W3C                +33 (0) 6 73 84 87 27<tel:%2B33%20%280%29%206%2073%2084%2087%2027>
BP 93
F-06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex,
France