Blockchain Standardization (was Re: PR for playground)

bcc: Credentials CG
cc: Blockchain CG

Migrating this thread to the Blockchain CG mailing list as it's become
more blockchain-y, than web payments-y or verifiable claim-y.

For those that didn't see the start of this thread, it is here:

https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-credentials/2017Mar/0023.html

On 03/31/2017 11:25 PM, Adrian Hope-Bailie wrote:
> I am interested to hear from those of you involved what the goals of
> these [Blockchain Standardization] initiatives are?

I think the goals are different between the standards bodies, and
personally, I find it very difficult to track everything going on at the
moment as things are still very dynamic.

> What are you trying to standardize?

I've heard at least these answers to that question:

* governance for each blockchain
* decentralized identifiers
* interledger transactions
* interledger linking
* standardization around Bitcoin/Ethereum
* smart contracts
* blockchain data models
* HTTP APIs

So, there is technical standardization and political governance. Our
organization is most interested in the technical standardization, but I
struggle to see any initiative that has drawn more than a handful of
blockchain organizations to the table. Interledger seems to be the most
far along. I think we're making progress for cross-chain decentralized
identifiers (DIDs). The Linked Data Decentralized Ledger stuff is new,
but I'm speaking at a workshop on the topic day after tomorrow in Perth,
Australia and will have a better idea on what the industry is thinking
wrt. traction at that point (I don't expect much traction at present).

So Adrian, to give you a data point... I can't see anything clearly yet,
but I know that we're going to be seeing more and more proposals for
standardization over the next year and we'll see how those resonate with
the community. I'm skeptical that we can do big "S" standardization and
should instead be seeking little "s" standardization. I think things
like Interledger, Chainpoint, decentralized identifiers, data models,
and HTTP APIs are all we could suggest standardization proposals for at
this point in time... and even then, they'll be rough for another year
or three before we start to see some momentum. Just my $0.02.

Adam, are you in Perth for WWW2017? Pindar and I will be there tomorrow
along with Tim and a few other blockchain folks. Perhaps we could sit
down and have a chat about what we see as reasonable things to pursue in
the next year or two?

-- manu

-- 
Manu Sporny (skype: msporny, twitter: manusporny, G+: +Manu Sporny)
Founder/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
blog: Rebalancing How the Web is Built
http://manu.sporny.org/2016/rebalancing/

Received on Sunday, 2 April 2017 02:20:33 UTC