I don't agree much with Michael Herman (Web 7? Blah! Terrible name!), but I
do agree with him that there are unaddressed issues in layering and
composability that have become barriers of entry for both engineering teams
and companies, who've largely now left the CCG table.
I agree with Manu that the VC/DID with JSON-LD stack is "already a layered,
composable architecture". However, I believe the problem is that there are
a lot of assumptions or unstated requirements that require greater skill &
knowledge from developers. (For instance, you really need to use SPARQL if
you are serious about using JSON-LD data in a large database given an
open-world model, and using that requires you to have a deeper
understanding of RDF that JSON-LD abstracts out.) Stop saying that RDF
knowledge is not required — as far as I have found, RDF skills are needed
for anything at production scale. Focus on helping them use RDF.
I also feel there are also layer violations between layers that make them
rather complex to implement. The separation between layers is not clean.
But they are livable.
That all being said, I still believe VCWG should focus on VC-LD and do
amazing things with it and not get lost in trying to address
JWT-CBOR-mDL-etc. focused concerns. Completing a VC 2.0 spec leveraging
well-defined JSON-LD and testable interoperable tools will be of great
utility to the community.
-- Christopher Allen