Re: [PROPOSED WORK ITEM] Cryptographic Event Log

Hate to ask you to spend more explanation time Manu, and appreciate the
write up so far, but would you mind breaking out key differences you see
from keytrans (and also SCITT from a more general digital notary
perspective)?

On Sun, Jul 13, 2025, 20:04 Manu Sporny <msporny@digitalbazaar.com> wrote:

> On Sun, Jul 13, 2025 at 7:59 PM Brian Richter <brian@aviary.tech> wrote:
> > Something that is clear from the spec but not specifically called out in
> this thread. This cryptographic event log uses data integrity proofs and
> there is no other available standard that meets that criteria other than
> what we’ve defined in did:webvh. If there is I would be interested in
> seeing it!
>
> Perhaps elaborating on why we're doing this call for adoption now might
> help:
>
> In the latest DID Methods WG charter, Markus noted that we should
> refer to the CEL spec as a potential input document to the WG for the
> "fully decentralized method". I didn't feel comfortable doing that
> since the CEL spec wasn't an official CCG work item yet (it's sitting
> in a corporate Github repo currently). Markus suggested we make it a
> CCG work item by volunteering to co-own it (thank you, Markus!) and
> then I raised this proposal.
>
> What we're trying to do here is propose a base technology as input to
> the DID Methods WG that could meet the "fully decentralized" class of
> DID Method, be acceptable to the people that don't like
> did:web/did:webvh because it's "not decentralized enough", and be
> acceptable to the anti-blockchain W3C members.
>
> As I mentioned in the previous post, it might be that what we have
> with did:webvh is enough, but we won't know until we're deep into the
> WG and we don't want to find out that did:webvh is "not decentralized
> enough" for some WG members and we had no alternative we explicitly
> mentioned in the charter that also meets the "not a blockchain"
> requirement from some W3C Members. The CEL spec is a way of hedging
> our bets on the "fully decentralized, not based on DNS, based on Web
> technologies, and not a blockchain" requirements that the collective
> whole seems to be projecting onto the DID Methods WG.
>
> -- manu
>
> --
> Manu Sporny - https://www.linkedin.com/in/manusporny/
> Founder/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
> https://www.digitalbazaar.com/
>
>