Re: CBOR-LD stabilization (was: Re: Regarding CBOR-LD Web Transports)

On 4/21/21 9:28 AM, Leonard Rosenthol wrote:
> However, I am concerned about the status (or lack thereof) on the actual 
> specification.

There is the start of a specification here, albeit, it is now out of date and
light on details:

https://digitalbazaar.github.io/cbor-ld-spec/

> Without an actual specification, preferably on an active track(!), it will
> not be possible for this technology to be used in other standards that
> would wish to do so.

While I agree with this statement, we're still in early days with the
pre-standard... it's not even a CG work item (in any CG, yet). We proposed it
to the JSON-LD group and the response was tepid interest and confusion.

The use case driving this stuff is the vaccination certificate work as well as
anti-fraud features on government-issued ID cards.

Until multiple companies engage in experiments (which is starting to happen
now w/ Mattr and Transmute), do implementations (which there is only one of
right now), it's an adopted work item (which is a discussion that still needs
to be had), and more loud industry support... there is only so much 3
companies can do.

That this stuff is of interest to Adobe is great news, but as you know, we
need it to be of interest to 30-50 companies before we can take it standards
track. While it looks like interest is building rapidly for CBOR-LD... we're
not quite there yet and I have no idea when we will be there.

To put it in perspective, it took ~9 years for the interest to build in Linked
Data Signatures before we were able to get a W3C Charter circulated for it. I
expect CBOR-LD might move much faster (it's far simpler than JSON-LD, VCs,
DIDs, or Linked Data Signatures).

> Also, I would like to see more work done on non-VC/DID uses cases for the
> technology to demonstrate its flexibility and benefit in other contexts
> that require optimized binary serializations.

Agreed, and that would require new participants to join in. This will most
likely occur via the proposed Linked Data Signatures WG. The current
participants are buried in work.

> I am happy to do what I can to further the work on the spec as needed...

The next step for the specification would be:

1. Reading and understanding the current stable
   implementation:

https://github.com/digitalbazaar/cborld/tree/main/lib

2. Translate the code into algorithms in the
   specification:

https://digitalbazaar.github.io/cbor-ld-spec/#get-term-codec-map-algorithm

PRs welcome. :)

-- 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 Sunday, 25 April 2021 15:13:34 UTC