Re: Chainpoint

Following Manu's checklist from the "Getting stuff done at W3C" thread,
I have taken the liberty to write down a little problem statement draft
regarding the Blockchain Data Anchoring formatting issue. Please
consider it as a starting point for discussion.


# Blockchain Data Anchoring: Statement of the Problem

This problem statement draft notes some facts and problems about
Blockchain Data Anchoring that, if not faced properly and on time, can
lead to future conflicts, poor practices and industry discredit.

+ __Blockchain Data Anchoring__ (BDA) solutions embed data into public
blockchains and generate proofs of anchorage (hereinafter called
__proofs__) that allow any holder of the original data to prove its
existence in a certain point in time.

+ BDA-based solutions providers are proliferating all around the world.
Some notable players are Stampery, Tierion, Blockstack, Factom,
Bitproof, Colu, Ascribe, Omni Layer, Coinspark and Monegraph.

+ The mentioned providers are already working with big companies that
may bring their own products or services based on BDA technology to
their customer base shortly.

+ Although most of them use very similar technologies and procedures to
perform data anchorage, every BDA-based solutions provider uses its own
ontology and data format for presenting proofs.

+ Such format incompatibility makes impossible to use the same software
for validating proofs coming from different providers. In addition, the
proofs cannot be either stored, retrieved or referred to in a uniform way.

+ The resulting fragmentation undermines the credibility of the
blockchain technologies and industry and as a whole. Furthermore, it
hinders its widespread usage, specially as a legally admissible mean of
evidence, because it reduces the willingness of computer science
judicial experts to learn and use the tools for presenting and defending
BDA proofs on court.

Best,
-- 
*Adán Sánchez de Pedro Crespo*
CTO, Stampery Inc.
San Francisco - Madrid
T: +34 663 163 375