Re: Open Wallet Foundation

The discussion is amazing and I celebrate you for every line you shared! Each of you has walked a journey long enough to recognize the need for discussion in the open – small(er) internal groups simply won’t have the power to liftoff.

I would like to submit to your attention our group sin: all too often, we as technologists, tend to rush and hack it, putting together a stack and iterating. `Solve it for the companies and all will follow.`, they said. `Deliver to a government and all will follow.`, they said.
These shortcuts are often dangerous for skewing the long-term outcomes, as tendency is to replace/displace incumbent technology providers with new ones without addressing the underlying needs/problems. Case in point is the smartcard industry which, for the better part of 40+ years has remained unchanged.
In a way, I echo Daniel B’s concerns that rush to define a stack (another way of saying, preemptively excluding a bunch of discussions and options) may be too much, too soon.

What I am suggesting is a step back and observation of the rituals around us. I bet you no two people on this mailing list have identical physical wallets. Equally, no two people have identical preferences on the mix of cash/cards they carry around. How about we built on the same premise and hammer on interoperability to a point where anyone is free to experience the future reality as they please: airgapped cold wallets or always-on cloud, or a random mix of those? This accounts for the individual liberties, privacy and convenience, while setting the tone away from vendor walled gardens and shaping a path to a standard.

The closest analogy that comes to mind on wallet evolution are password managers: while 1Password and BitWarden are architecturally different from LastPass, you can freely roam to/from those – the convenience and security decisions are the differentiators.

Kind regards,
Kalin

From: Christopher Allen <ChristopherA@lifewithalacrity.com>
Date: Wednesday, 21 September 2022 at 17:41
To: Caspar Roelofs <caspar@gimly.io>
Cc: Adrian Gropper <agropper@healthurl.com>, Anders Rundgren <anders.rundgren.net@gmail.com>, Liam McCarty <liam@unumid.co>, Orie Steele <orie@transmute.industries>, Philipp Schmidt <phi.schmidt@gmail.com>, Sharon Leu <sleu@jff.org>, W3C Credentials Community Group <public-credentials@w3.org>
Subject: Re: Open Wallet Foundation
Sorry, SiliconSalon.info

— Christopher Allen [via iPhone]

On Wed, Sep 21, 2022 at 6:13 AM Caspar Roelofs <caspar@gimly.io<mailto:caspar@gimly.io>> wrote:
Dear Christopher,
This is very interesting. Is it possible that the soliconsalon url is incorrect? When visiting I only see an option to buy the domain.

Kind regards,
Caspar

--
Caspar Roelofs
Gimly Projects and Partnerships
Amsterdam, the Netherlands
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From: Christopher Allen <ChristopherA@lifewithalacrity.com<mailto:ChristopherA@lifewithalacrity.com>>
Date: Sunday, 18 September 2022 at 01:27
To: Adrian Gropper <agropper@healthurl.com<mailto:agropper@healthurl.com>>
Cc: Anders Rundgren <anders.rundgren.net@gmail.com<mailto:anders.rundgren.net@gmail.com>>, Liam McCarty <liam@unumid.co<mailto:liam@unumid.co>>, Orie Steele <orie@transmute.industries>, Philipp Schmidt <phi.schmidt@gmail.com<mailto:phi.schmidt@gmail.com>>, Sharon Leu <sleu@jff.org<mailto:sleu@jff.org>>, W3C Credentials Community Group <public-credentials@w3.org<mailto:public-credentials@w3.org>>
Subject: Re: Open Wallet Foundation
Part of the problem with our cryptographic wallet ecosystem is lack of support for modern cryptography. Not just zkp and blockchain technologies, but even some modest improvements to legacy.

Blockchain Commons has begun hosting a series of virtual workshops that are bringing multiple silicon chip designers together with hardware wallet manufacturers & security engineers to address these issues.

The results from our last two workshops are at http://www.SiliconSalon.com.

I think you’ll find the videos of the presentation quite enlightening. (The rest of our workshop is Chatham House but key quotes are shared.)

If you’d like to be involved in the future of these workshops and/or open & interoperable wallet standard, I encourage you to become a sponsor of Blockchain Commons and get involved.

I personally feel that given the history of big corporation capture of Linux Foundation in projects like HyperLedger, that instead an investment in our efforts will give more “bang for the buck” (or per hour invested) than being involved in the Open Wallet Foundation.

For more on our mission & vision see:

https://www.blockchaincommons.com/vision.html

For our reports on what we accomplished Q2, Q1, and last year (next will be out after RWOT) I , see:

https://www.blockchaincommons.com/categories/#quarterlies

— Christopher Allen