[MINUTES] CCG Incubation 2026-02-17

Meeting Summary: osb-nmyo-muh (2026-02-17 10:59 GMT-5)

*Date:* 2026-02-17 *Time:* 10:59 GMT-5 *Attendees:* Benjamin Young, Brent
Zundel, Dave Longley, Elaine Wooton, Parth Bhatt, Ted Thibodeau Jr
Topics Covered:

   - *Verifiable Verifiers Issuers and Verifiers Specification (PR #42):*
   Discussion centered on the shape of the JSON and terminology used in the
   spec, specifically regarding trust list properties.
   - *Etsy Trust Services List:* The PR #42 is largely dictated by this
   list, and there was consensus on an approach for property naming and
   referencing external lists.
   - *Closed PRs and Blocked Issues:* Discussion on potentially closing
   older PRs that are now redundant due to merged changes or have been
   overtaken by events.
   - *Issue Filing and Triage:* Ted Thibodeau Jr. filed several issues
   based on comments from previous PRs. The group discussed the possibility of
   adding labels to issues for prioritization and effort.
   - *Use Case Illustrations (Issue #43):* The comic-style images in the
   use case section were deemed misleading and distracting, with a suggestion
   to remove them or replace them with simpler graphics like stick figures.
   - *Extracting Use Cases to a Separate Document:* A plan to create a
   separate document for use cases was mentioned.
   - *Output Validation and Governance:* A note by Manu about output
   validation requiring governance was briefly discussed.
   - *Naming Convention Issues:* The possibility of closing an issue
   related to naming conventions due to rework in the spec was raised.
   - *Metaphorical Use of "Let's Encrypt":* Discussion on the
   appropriateness of the "Let's Encrypt" metaphor in the context of VC
   issuance and recognition, with the conclusion that it might not stretch
   well beyond domain authenticity.
   - *Size of Lists and Performance:* An older concern about the size of
   lists and a suggestion to combine them with chain lists was brought up,
   noting that performance implications should be considered.
   - *Meeting Cadence and Calendar Items:* Ted Thibodeau Jr. suggested
   clearer labeling of calendar items for W3C Community Group events.

Key Points:

   - *PR #42 Focus:* The primary focus was on PR #42, with Dave Longley
   explaining the proposed change to make the "trust list" property more
   generic and allow for different types of trust lists to be expressed via
   type fields. The ability to externally reference these lists was also
   reinforced.
   - *PR #29 and #40:* There was an agreement to confirm the closure of PR
   #29 on the next call, as PR #40's merging likely makes it redundant.
   - *Issue Triage Strategy:* The group considered adding labels to issues
   for effort and discussion, but acknowledged potential permission
   limitations. Commenting on issues was identified as an alternative.
   - *Use Case Imagery:* The current comic-style images in the use cases
   were generally disliked for their distracting nature and inappropriateness
   for technical specifications.
   - *Separation of Concerns:* The idea of separating use cases into their
   own document was supported.
   - *"Let's Encrypt" Metaphor Limitation:* The group recognized that the
   "Let's Encrypt" metaphor is limited to domain authenticity and doesn't
   easily extend to the broader concepts of VC recognition and party
   reputation.
   - *Future Discussions:* The need for potential threat modeling and
   further discussion on list size and performance was highlighted.
   - *Meeting Structure:* The attendees acknowledged the absence of Manu
   and David Chadwick and expressed hope for their participation in future
   calls. The upcoming VC Working Group and Spec Refinement calls were also
   mentioned.

Text: https://meet.w3c-ccg.org/archives/w3c-ccg-ccg-incubation-2026-02-17.md

Video:
https://meet.w3c-ccg.org/archives/w3c-ccg-ccg-incubation-2026-02-17.mp4
*osb-nmyo-muh (2026-02-17 10:59 GMT-5) - Transcript* *Attendees*

Benjamin Young, Brent Zundel, Dave Longley, Elaine Wooton, Parth Bhatt, Ted
Thibodeau Jr
*Transcript*

Benjamin Young: Hey folks, I'm just giving it a few more minutes for David
to show up hopefully. and then we can continue after that. So maybe five if
that works for you.

Benjamin Young: Hey Brent, we're just giving it a couple more minutes for
David to show up hopefully. Thanks for coming.

Benjamin Young: Okay, what we can continue with I suppose and see what
happens. I think mainly there is one pending PR that's worth a review. this
is the verifiable verifiers issuers and verifiers call. Those of you may
have wandered in. and generally we're looking at the shape of the JSON and
the terms used in that spec. And I'm working on getting links for that.
00:05:00

Benjamin Young: Brent, mostly for your edification, I'm dropping some past
work into the chat. there was this spreadsheet of terms that we were Lost
that tab. Here it is. And then this is the R that we'll discuss today. So
number 42 centers around the Etsy trust services list which has for the
most part dictated what we've been talking about for the last month on this
spec.

Benjamin Young: there was some consensus last week with David here around
an approach to be taken. Manu then wrote a PR and then there's further
discussion in this PR. that maybe the PR doesn't quite reflect the
consensus. So there may need to be another revision or two. Manu is away
today traveling. we can take a look at this for a little bit at least so
everybody's aware of it and then we can talk about what else we might
accomplish on this call if anything. Dave, I think you were the one with
the final addition here. Ted, I think yours are grammatical mostly, right?

Benjamin Young: Go ahead. Thank you.

Dave Longley: Sure, I can speak to my suggestion. I think it's sort of in
line with both what I think Manu said in his own comments on his own PR and
where I thought we were on the conversation last time we met whether I
can't remember if that was last week or not. the current tax changes in
this PR make a property called at I think Etsy trust list. And I think what
we wanted to do I think what we more or less had consensus to do was make
some other property which in my suggestion I just put trust list. I cut the
Etsy off the front of it.

Dave Longley: make the property say something more generic like trust list
and then allow various different types of trust list to be expressed in the
type fields underneath trust list. And so that would include things like
Etsy trust list which we can put in the base context for this work and if
there are any other kind of trust lists that make their way into that
context that's fine. and anyone else who has their own trust list or other
ecosystem that they want to support with this mechanism can add an
additional context defining their own type. And then the other properties
in there and this is what we discussed last week is just being able to
externally reference these lists because they all have their own formats
that might not even be like this one is an XML. It's not JSON compatible.

Dave Longley: and we decided that it probably was not worth our effort to
try and map everything from a really domain specific area into JSON when
the people using these lists have already written software to consume it
and so it's probably better to link off to that. You can include a digest
multibbase value for it if you would like, but David Chadwick mentioned
that you might not actually want to do that for these lists because you
want to allow that trust list that you're referencing to evolve over time
and you rely on TLS to pick it up and any signatures on the list itself as
opposed to requiring it to be a specific version.

Dave Longley: though you have the option when you create a VC of recognized
entities. So my only suggestion here is that instead of having Etsy trust
list as a property, we have some other property. It could be trust list, it
could be something else. We have a better name. and we can always bike shed
that later after this PR goes in. and then I put the ID as a URL to
reference… wherever the list is. And then optionally you can put a digest
on it.
00:10:00

Dave Longley:

Benjamin Young: Great overview.

Benjamin Young: Anyone have any questions? I think based on everything you
just described, Dave, that this is essentially reviewed. We're waiting on
feedback from Manu. Dave's not here to review it further. maybe Chadwick.
So, yeah, I think that's done. unless there's further conversation or
questions about it.

Benjamin Young: I think the only other two PRs that are open have been open
since the fall and are blocked by either conflicts or review or have been
overtaken by events probably. Go ahead, Dave.

Dave Longley: I imagine we don't have to do this on the call, but I imagine
our plan is to close PR29 based on the other PRs that went in.

Dave Longley: We might just want to suggest that we confirm that on the
next call. Yeah. Yeah.

Benjamin Young: Okay, can do that.

Benjamin Young: I'll add a note about it based on recent PRs, not this
pending one.

Dave Longley: The merging of PR40, I think, means that we probably don't
need or want PR 29. And we merged 40 last week.

Benjamin Young: 40. I won't close it, I guess, until we've given time for
David Chadwick to respond.

Benjamin Young: and the group to discuss it I guess next week for our usual
time boxing call to which I don't have permission to close stuff anyway.

Benjamin Young: So, there's that. Ted, I noticed in the issues list that
you are filing issues. Do you want to talk about the one you just filed?

Ted Thibodeau Jr: If I can find my mute button. there's a couple of
comments that I had made on existing PRs that man had suggested would be
better as their own issues and that's all I'm doing.

Benjamin Young:

Benjamin Young: Okay, probably things for him to address as he does future
PRs or…

Ted Thibodeau Jr: potentially the one I just did was that there is a
statement that says the value of this thing must be a URL and…

Benjamin Young: who right No.

Ted Thibodeau Jr: then pros that says that image data might be a data
scheme URL but that's not the first thing that's going to come to anybody's
mind.

Ted Thibodeau Jr: So it should be more clearly spelled out.

Benjamin Young: Yeah, for Yeah, we bumped into that one a few times. Thanks
for calling it out. And I guess you had a couple others you were adding.

Ted Thibodeau Jr: Yeah, along the same lines.

Benjamin Young: Okay, I think you're fine.

Ted Thibodeau Jr: I haven't gotten to them yet, so I can't tell you what
they are.

Benjamin Young: We could go through some of these other issues. I think
some of them are not addressable by us. Go ahead, Dave. Yeah.

Dave Longley: Yeah, I was wondering if we had labels for loweffort, high
effort discussion, things like that. We could go through the issue list and
just give our best effort to tag things in that respect. and just go
through the
00:15:00

Benjamin Young: If we do, I can't do it.

Benjamin Young: So because I don't have permissions which I can ask the
chairs for that which seems yeah we can do that…

Dave Longley: We can also comment on the issue if we don't have the
permission to do it.

Benjamin Young: but I feel like that's I don't know the labeling let us
Yeah.

Dave Longley: It has a triage smell to it.

Benjamin Young: It feels like we're gonna have to reread the issue just to
find the label again. but we can do that. Can at least get some comments on
some. for example, issue 43. this is about the comic style images being
misleading and inappropriate in the broader sense, but for us back here.

Benjamin Young: certainly it's subjective but it does feel unique to this
spec so far and that is usually its own sort of smell. I can screen share
if that would help. Do that. Is the size of that tolerable for everybody?
Okay.

Benjamin Young: Comics are just two of them. There's this thing and then
this one.

Ted Thibodeau Jr: Yeah, those are better for slide decks than they are for
spec.

Benjamin Young: Yeah, I would agree.

Ted Thibodeau Jr: They're not even comic style. They're like comic
annotations on photographs and…

Ted Thibodeau Jr: that's just super distracting.

Benjamin Young: Yeah, I don't think it is helpful.

Benjamin Young: Anyone want to defend that stance before I leave a comment?

Ted Thibodeau Jr: You could say something suggest something like stick
figure which works most of the time.

Benjamin Young: We could just take them out. do we feel like the content
needs representing in this brevity?

Dave Longley: I don't know that we need an image, but I also wanted to note
that that is under a section for use cases. And usually when we move these
things over into the working group, we separate the use case doc into its
own document. I don't think we would probably keep those images in the use
cases document either.

Benjamin Young: Mhm. Right. Yeah.

Benjamin Young: Okay, great. One done sort of or would be I had permission.
Bren, you don't have any CCG repo skills, do you?

Brent Zundel: I don't think so.

Benjamin Young: Okay, that's fine. I'll send an email for the usual
culprits. Monor does clearly, but he's not here. does anyone have a sense
of this?

Benjamin Young: Have you looked at it? Explain that output validation
requires governance. Drop a link to it as well. I think this is more a note
by Manu to Manu for a new bit of content,…
00:20:00

Benjamin Young: but any general thoughts on it?

Ted Thibodeau Jr: That looks more like a man…

Ted Thibodeau Jr: who note to self than it does anything else.

Benjamin Young: Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Longley: Hey, this just seems like it's suggesting instructions in the
spec for anyone who's going to produce a recognized entity BC that they
need to actually check the JSON schemas that they're going to put in there
such that they match what they're expecting the recognized issuer to issue.
So it's just seems to be a note to make sure that we provide that guidance.

Benjamin Young: Yeah. Yeah, agreed. Trying to think through the technical
ramifications of that, but we'll leave that alone for now. Another use case
one.

Benjamin Young: I do think I'm going to go ahead and make an issue for
this. extract use cases a separate document.

Benjamin Young: Go ahead.

Dave Longley: I think I see one that we might be able to actually close the
naming convention one…

Benjamin Young: Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Longley: because we've done this we've reworked things.

Benjamin Young: That's…

Dave Longley: We might be able to close it.

Benjamin Young: what we've been doing, right? Yeah.

Benjamin Young: This was the adventure with the spreadsheet. go ahead.

Dave Longley: Yeah, I would suggest that when we close was it 42?

Dave Longley: Yeah, when we close 42 I think our comment should be when 42
is closed, this can probably be closed and we can confirm that when we do
that.

Benjamin Young: Thank you, Dave. This one feels a little related. It's a
use case. this one maybe.

Dave Longley: Yeah, that one might be closable in the same way. Yep. Yeah,…

Benjamin Young: Yeah, the things have shifted it around enough where this
is probably not an issue anymore.

Dave Longley: you might want to go back and copy your text to the clipboard.

Benjamin Young: Yeah, for real. Not a bad idea.

Benjamin Young: Yeah, I want an editorial label on a lot of these minimum
of examples. I think this is just another note some discussion.
00:25:00

Dave Longley: I guess we should leave this one open for discussion, but we
might have decided to move away from it with the new model that we have.

Benjamin Young: Any comment worth leaving?

Dave Longley: Now it's just going to come up again.

Benjamin Young: It feels like an earlier discussion that now needs
reterming or…

Benjamin Young: something. Mhm.

Dave Longley: I see 26 is probably going to be I imagine we can close that
one.

Dave Longley: So with that clipboard text because we will not that's
external now.

Benjamin Young: Yep. It's kind of the whole spec.

Benjamin Young: Or just a general idea requesting feedback. Yeah.

Dave Longley: Yeah, I don't know how much we're meant to think about the
metaphor here. is clearly the not thinking about it metaphorically. The
literal use of let's encrypt is already going to be in place for you to be
know that the information the domain that you're speaking with is authentic
that is…

Benjamin Young: Right.

Dave Longley: what you're going to get out of it. everything else that's
involved in these VCs and expressing recognized entities is another layer
and to me it seems like it's a different layer than just authenticity of
the request. It's information about the party that's making the request and
what others think about that party which is I don't know that we can easily
stretch the metaphor for let's encrypt that other than some automated
process that people could go do…

Dave Longley: but I don't think you can I mean let's encrypt makes sense
because it's just proof of control over a domain you don't need to get
anyone else's opinion about whether or…

Benjamin Young: Right. Yeah.

Dave Longley: not you should be recognized to do So I don't know that this
stretches in that way and we might be able to close the issue on that
basis. I don't know.

Benjamin Young: Yeah. or just provide that feedback as a thanks for the
idea. And I don't know this person. I'm not sure if they've been in any of
the calls, but it feels like I just wandering past kind of thing. But maybe
they're doing wallet work.

Dave Longley: I did see when you clicked on their profile,…

Dave Longley: one of their activities was working on the Etsy trust list
verification down there or so doing something related to that.

Benjamin Young: Yep.

Benjamin Young: There it And some might blow it. would you want to share
those same thoughts on this issue and…

Benjamin Young: just see what comes next?

Dave Longley: Yeah. …

Dave Longley: I can go off and type something there.

Benjamin Young: Yeah, thank you. This is an oldie. Size of the list was
raised as a concern.

Benjamin Young: suggestion being combining the list with chain lists. I
don't know that there's mention of size. Think somebody else did mention it
recently. one we should probably discuss, especially if we're going to end
up paginating them or something.
00:30:00

Benjamin Young: know that a scope section has been added. Yeah.

Benjamin Young: Okay, we're almost to the bottom of the list. You're super
old. You're sharing list. Yeah, doesn't look interest. But it is again,…

Dave Longley: Yeah, there might have to be a whole threat model for this
going forward with the way things are changing process-wise.

Benjamin Young: that's true.

Benjamin Young: Leave that there. It's probably the same thing. Not sure
it's faster to copy and paste that much text. Okay, last one. Yeah.

Benjamin Young: All righty, folks. Any other thoughts or things you want to
watch me Appreciate y'all being here. Sorry it wasn't our usual rousing Mon
David discussions,…

Benjamin Young: but maybe next week we'll be back to our exciting
programming.

Ted Thibodeau Jr: I'll say a couple of things that the more ears hear it,…

Ted Thibodeau Jr: the more likely it'll get brought up next time. I put a
comment on the list of potential work items. just asking that the calendar
items get WI or work item or task force or something like that on them so
it's a little more clear what's going on cuz today's three CCG events and
it took me a minute to figure out what was going on at yes the actual CPG
it's this one and…

Benjamin Young: Yeah, you have three. yeah, there are three. There's the
next one, which is the usual the CCG.
00:35:00

Ted Thibodeau Jr: it's VCOM

Benjamin Young: Yep. …

Ted Thibodeau Jr: I have a feeling there's more later in the week,…

Ted Thibodeau Jr: but I didn't dig that far.

Benjamin Young: I think you're good. There's the VC working group tomorrow.
Maybe the spec refinement call. Is that thing still a thing?

Ted Thibodeau Jr: I don't know what status that has at this point, but

Benjamin Young: Yeah, I don't either. I think it keeps getting cancelled.
Go ahead.

Brent Zundel: still no the refinement call happens.

Brent Zundel: It's going to discuss on a weekly basis either the rendering
method or…

Brent Zundel: the confidence method specification. it gets bumped by the
monthly VC working group call.

Benjamin Young: All right.

Dave Longley: Yeah, tomorrow should be render method discussion.

Ted Thibodeau Jr: Prepare in advance.

Benjamin Young: I should probably get ready for that then. Okay. Nah,…

Ted Thibodeau Jr: Hell no.

Benjamin Young:

Benjamin Young: I know. It's not fun. Improv is such a great thing. thanks
for being here, everybody. And this one should be back in a week's time.
Yep. And yeah,…

Ted Thibodeau Jr: There is All right. What?

Benjamin Young: we'll try and get some confirmations from David and Manu in
future maybe before the call to make sure that we can have a call. but
thanks for the clerical help and we'll see you in a week. By
Meeting ended after 00:36:54 👋

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