Wallet Portability (was: Re: New Work Item Proposal: Universal Wallet 2020)

On 6/24/20 11:23 PM, Orie Steele wrote:
> maybe there is a better way to get wallet portability and
> interoperability that does not involve defining the data model for
> wallet contents and a set of interfaces that a wallet vendor might
> support that are linked to the data model.

There is a better way... copying Encrypted Data Vaults.

If wallet software has to understand everything stored in a wallet to
transfer the contents of the wallet from one provider to another, we've
lost.

Here's an analogy:

A hard drive manufacturer DOES NOT need to understand how to interpret
music lists, pictures, documents, grocery lists, and videos in order to
copy those things from one hard drive to another one.

Similarly, an operating system doesn't have to understand the objects
it's storing -- they are just blobs of binary data and the most minimal
of metadata to operate on those blobs of data.

The only thing we have to do to ensure Wallet portability is make sure
all of the data in one wallet can be copied to another one... and that's
the purpose of Encrypted Data Vaults - to provide that interface and
basic data model.

Everything else is layered on top, in application layers -- which is
what I thought Universal Wallet 2020 was doing. It seems to be an
application layer specification, not a portability layer specification.

Am I missing something there?

-- manu

-- 
Manu Sporny - https://www.linkedin.com/in/manusporny/
Founder/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
blog: Veres One Decentralized Identifier Blockchain Launches
https://tinyurl.com/veres-one-launches

Received on Thursday, 25 June 2020 13:34:52 UTC