Re: Just off the wire

> Was kind of confused after reading that!
in case you want to know, I'm also confused. We had a good interview 
with the guy, but the overall output is misleading in many ways imho.
Obviously the point that anything will be done before sept 2017 is a 
complete misunderstanding. This is the date of the end of the group.

the message I've tried to make and didn't get through is that:
*the group is not setup to standardize bitcoin or crypto-currencies in 
general
*the objective is to enable more easily payments with bitcoin and alike 
as a payment instrument, together with other legacy instruments
*the group is likely to focus first on the major issues e-commerce is 
facing today: fraud and card abandonment. This is were the need is, this 
is were the demand is and this is were we have resources in the group as 
of now. wallet is one way for of adressing this

I'm surely convinced that bitcoin and crypto-currencies are the major 
innovation in payment in the last decade. But at this point in time, I 
feel it is still in the innovation space, and not yet in the 
standardization space. I'm sure the time will come, but I've not seen 
yet any major player coming to the group with specific needs for 
standardization.

steph

> I do feel that the charter and use cases are underweight crypto
> currencies.  Those document read like the group is unaware either that
> crypto currencies exist, or that it is the major innovation payments in
> the last decade.  Not all together accurate, but neither a million miles
> away from the mark.
>
> It's not all that clear how much of a role there is for crypto currency
> work in this group, or how welcome it would be.  As someone working in
> this area, I'd like to follow this work, but am unsure how much or how
> little to participate in the core discussion.
>
> The piece didnt really go in to the fact that very few crypto firms have
> engaged the payments group.  Either as W3C members, as individuals on
> the mailing list (although Amir has posted a few times), or at the
> workshop.  This group has been publicized well on bitcoin mailing lists.
>
> The web is generally open ended enough for there to be a place in the
> standard for crypto currencies, even though it's not explicitly stated.
>
> Personally I will probably take 80% of the work done here, and create
> 20% a new standard that should be closely compatible with w3c payments,
> work with bitcoin and other cryptos, and hopefully be a basis for v2 of
> the spec.  But that's probably looking at sometime closer to 2020 ...
> hopefully more btc people will engage during this time, indeed, I've had
> conversations with core devs in the last week about a documenting
> RESTful APIs which are starting to go into the core in the next weeks.
>
>

-- 
Stephane Boyera        stephane@w3.org
W3C                +33 (0) 6 73 84 87 27
BP 93
F-06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex,
France

Received on Saturday, 1 November 2014 11:11:34 UTC