Re: Interledger Architecture: OWPS naming

Great questions and points.

ILP is about moving assets securely, but it doesn't include much of the who
or why in it, which are necessary for something like a consumer payment
scheme.

My take on OWPS (terrible name, I agree) is that it's about defining the
higher level protocols and rules needed to make a full(ish) payment scheme
on top of ILP. Importantly, this "scheme" would differ from existing ones
because it would be operator-less and much more open. It would be more like
the internet that's governed by some general understandings about what
being connected to the internet means for you, as well as bilateral
relationships between the companies that comprise it. An example of the
type of rule that would need to be defined is whether there are chargebacks.

Some questions to answer on the payment scheme level:

   - Should we define the *ways to communicate* the rules and what
   information is required by the various participants to execute a payment?
   (This would give more flexibility but would be more complex and could
   potentially lead to situations where the rules don't match up between two
   providers and no payments can be sent between them)
   - Should we define *the rules and what* information is supplied with the
   payment? (This could make interoperability between those that specifically
   opted to join the scheme a lot simpler, though we'd also need to recognize
   that not everyone would get on board with it immediately, if ever)
   - What else would the agreements between the FIs involved in this scheme
   need to include, and how standardized would the agreements (need to) be if
   they're not being enforced by a single governing party?


On Thu, Mar 24, 2016 at 10:15 AM, Roger Bass <roger@traxiant.com> wrote:

> Stefan et al,
>
> OWPS, the Open Web Payment Scheme, doesn't seem particularly web-oriented
> - so we could lose the W for starters - so OPS maybe. And incidentally -
> should this be a Scheme, a Protocol, a Framework or something else?
>
> As you say, the overall project is "Interledger" so, how about OIPS, or
> IPS? ("I" could even be "Internet" if we wanted to reserve "Interledger"
> for the lower protocol layers).
>
> As a more user-friendly name, we could use OpenPay (o-Pay)... or even
> i-Pay... though there might be trademark issues there.
>
> But per my other email, maybe some clarification on scope and goals for
> this protocol layer would help frame the naming question.
>
> Roger
>



-- 
Evan Schwartz | Software Architect | Ripple
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