Re: Support for Verifiable Claims

On 11/3/16 8:57 AM, Adrian Hope-Bailie wrote:
> Is a standard designed or does it evolve as a result of collaboration
> between implementers to standardize what they have already incubated?
>
> That seems to be the debate underlying this thread.
> [snip]...
> Therefore, if this work continues to be blocked on the back of a small
> number of objections from a minority of members who feel it does not
> justify allocation of W3C resources, then I believe it is the right of
> the other members to ensure it gets the priority they feel it
> deserves, by blocking any other work that is using up those resources.


I agree with much of what Adrian has said, but I feel the scope of his 
reasoning failed to include two possibly pivotal ideas, both of which 
I think are examples of Lessig's "code is law":

1. The blockchain (both as permissioned and permissionless ledgers, ie 
Bitcoin, LBRY, Sovrin), especially in non-currency forms, is a 
suddenly-appearing wildcard that may upend code efforts and protocols 
that have been in development for many years.

2. The global scope of these ledgers, if they can be successfully 
coded, for example for Identity (see Sovrin 
[http://www.evernym.com/technology/]), will upend not only code 
protocols in development, but far beyond that: national borders and 
passport systems, as well as many existing commercial systems on the 
web and off the web.

Plus, germane to the current debate about whether to form a VCWG at 
the W3C: to the extent that such ledger-based credential systems have 
good privacy controls on metadata, they may also upend (and ultimately 
destroy) the advertising model used by Google, Facebook, etc. -- not 
to mention break down the Identity silos each company maintains to 
help keep people coming back to their own pages.

Given this, reliance on W3C, which is largely funded by companies 
using pre-ledger protocols, as the place to standardize, might be a 
red herring.

The UN may be the closest thing to an existing body that has the 
authority to decide whether global digital Identity (which arguably is 
the most important 'verifiable claim', though not the only one) should 
happen -- and it has already ruled that it should.

Therefore, ironically, I feel Michael Champion's (and Chris Wilson's) 
statements in this thread about the need to refine the code first may 
be correct, although perhaps not for the same reasons he believes. Mr. 
Champion said at one point, "...we push for incubation-first - -build 
communities, get rough consensus and running code first, then 
standardize what is successful."

As others have pointed out, the representative of a large corporation 
(in this case, Microsoft) could have various reasons for holding this 
position that are tied to the interests of the corporation rather than 
humanity as a whole.

But, looked at from outside the W3C structure, I submit that we still 
need to know -- urgently, given the number of organizations that are 
lined up to use a functional verifiable claims code system -- whether 
ledger systems, and particularly permissioned ledgers such as Sovrin 
uses, can solve the dual problems of efficiency and privacy. And we 
don't need to know it in the abstract. We need to know it in code. We 
need implementations.

I suggest also that the interesting discussions at the F2F of the 
Verifiable Claims Task Force recently, which included representatives 
from Evernym, Sovrin's producer, lead me to think that the pre-ledger 
coders and the post-ledger coders have much to teach each other about 
what will and won't work on the web in this situation; that it will 
have to be a joint effort, to get something that truly works.

And if it does work, then whether the W3C is chosen as the place to 
standardize it won't matter very much. Neither will it matter if it's 
found that it doesn't work.

What would be tragic would be if it could have worked, but was stopped 
inside the W3C. I don't think it's worth taking that chance, given who 
is funding the W3C, and the past histories.

Further, given the financial resources of the combined organizations 
who are listed on the page showing support for Verifiable Claims, it 
seems that it's worthwhile and possible to simply go ahead without the 
W3C.

Therefore, it might be good if a temporary body is formed, perhaps in 
Github, or elsewhere, for the express purpose of incubating a standard 
to be used by all those who have signed up for wanting a VC working 
group, and that this body adopt a revised charter that includes more 
emphasis on test implementations.

Steven Rowat

Received on Thursday, 3 November 2016 19:18:45 UTC