Re: Why can't I pay using a Verifiable Credential?

This is exactly what I was hoping to understand!
- Thank you to Anders for pointing out the user experience and the role of
P2P payments that may not be subject to KYC.
- Thank you to Melvin for pointing out NWC as a potential, relatively
simple answer to my question and the impact of stablecoins as a part of a
scalable solution.
- Thank you to Tim for pointing out why OAuth is not appropriate for the
payments use-case and endorsing NWC.

I have no investment in either TLS, NWC, or OAuth / UMA2. As a delegated
authorization protocol GNAP, I think, solves many if not all of the
security and implementation issues with OAuth and does accept VCs as part
of a standardized request format.

Given emerging standards for MCP, A2A, and P2P payments, what should be the
role of Verifiable Credentials, if any?

- Adrian

On Tue, Aug 12, 2025 at 8:24 AM Tim Bouma <trbouma@gmail.com> wrote:

> It’s what I learned from implementing Nostr Wallet Connect that prompted
> me to write this post. I’ve been expanding the protocol to offer and share
> records, which prompted me to review the family of protocols from OAuth2.0.
>
> I realized what was a great tradeoff decision in 2012, delegating security
> to the TLS pipes, no longer holds. Too many seams and external
> dependencies. I also concluded that there was no longer a need to have
> separate entities for Client, Authorization Server, and Relying Party
> because you could reduce the flow down to two equally capable
> counterpartied.
>
> All said, OAuth is still fine for the current generation of solutions, but
> now I am looking past this horizon where every party in an interaction
> needs to be cryptographically assured from end to end. OAuth goes part way,
> and there are some great enhancements, but no longer enough.
>
> As for payments, that was the starting point of my project. I am now
> expanding into sharing of records with Nostr Wallet Connect.
>
>
> https://open.substack.com/pub/trbouma/p/why-i-can-no-longer-support-oauth
> <https://open.substack.com/pub/trbouma/p/why-i-can-no-longer-support-oauth?r=3r59&utm_medium=ios>
>
> On Tue, Aug 12, 2025 at 2:34 AM Melvin Carvalho <melvincarvalho@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> út 12. 8. 2025 v 3:00 odesílatel Adrian Gropper <agropper@healthurl.com>
>> napsal:
>>
>>> I'm so tired of Venmo.
>>>
>>
>> Might be closer than you think.
>>
>> Now that we have did:nostr and BIP340 VCs it should be fairly
>> straightforward to do payments.  Here is an example use case:
>>
>> https://bitcoinmagazine.com/technical/nostr-wallet-connect-bitcoin-usb
>>
>>
>>>
>>> - Adrian
>>>
>>