The Verifiable Claims Task Force

A Task Force of the Web Payments Interest Group

Verifiable Claims Telecon

Minutes for 2016-09-06

Agenda
https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webpayments-ig/2016Sep/0003.html
Topics
  1. Quick introduction from Pindar Wong
  2. F2F Meeting at IIW
  3. Verifiable Claims Implementations to Demo
  4. Verifiable Claims RC-2 Draft Charter Feedback
  5. Estonian E-Residency Face-to-Face
  6. Planning for W3C TPAC
  7. Interplanetary File System and Verifiable Claims
Organizer
Manu Sporny
Scribe
Shane McCarron
Present
Shane McCarron, Pindar Wong, Manu Sporny, Christopher Allen, Dan Burnett, Matt Stone, Tim Holborn, Dave Crocker, Adrian Gropper, Dave Longley, David Ezell, Matt Collier, Rob Trainer, Eric Korb, David I. Lehn, Colleen Kennedy, Adam Lake, Richard Varn, Les Chasen
Audio Log
Shane McCarron is scribing.

Topic: Quick introduction from Pindar Wong

Pindar Wong: Chairman of VeriFi Hong Kong [scribe assist by Manu Sporny]
... Long standing member of the Web Payments community group. Interest here is convergence of Verifiable Claims and Blockchain stuff in Hong Kong.
... Also interested in eid.cn

Topic: F2F Meeting at IIW

Manu Sporny: F2F meeting scheduled.
... going to miss a couple of people because of various conflicts.
... Coinciding with IIW. Oct 27 and 28. Last day of IIW and the Friday.
... Thanks to IIW people. They are excited to have us there. We are excited to be there. Lots of common interests.
Christopher Allen: Also, #RebootingWebOfTrust is three days before http://www.weboftrust.info/
Manu Sporny: They will be providing food etc. All you need to do is buy a ticket. There is a discount code there. Use the links in the email to register.
...Before IIW is the rebooting web of trust workshop. 1.5 weeks of claims / identity / blockchain stuff. Good opportunity.
Pindar Wong: Will it be livestreamed?
Christopher Allen: No.
Pindar Wong: Ok, thanks
Manu Sporny: The thing we need to do by the time this rolls around is have the agenda down and presenters sorted.
... Right now it will be open to the public. No W3C Working Group yet.
Dan Burnett: Is there any chance for remote participation for the two days of VCTF?
Manu Sporny: Focus upon technical work. We do have a 1 day F2F agenda so far. Hoping to have 1.5 days through Friday at 3 PM so people can fly out on the Friday.
Manu Sporny: Will try to have dial in numbers. It may not be possible. We don't know yet.
Matt Stone: Ironic that connectivity is problematic...
Tim Holborn: Google hangouts?
Christopher Allen: They don't have great connectivity unless the conferences pays a lot extra for it.
Manu Sporny: The issue is not whether we want to do it. We could set up something but connectivity can be a problem.
Dave Crocker: 404 On charter link: The W3C page for this task force includes a link to the "widely socialized" charter that doesn't work: https://w3c.github.io/webpayments-ig/VCTF/charter/vcwg-draft.html
Manu Sporny: Dave Crocker, Sorry, this is the latest one - https://w3c.github.io/webpayments-ig/VCTF/charter/rc-2.html

Topic: Verifiable Claims Implementations to Demo

Christopher Allen: One of the goals of RWOT is to initially replicate what PGP does as far as web of trust is concerned.
... with more modern technolgies / approaches.
... One thing that PGP does is establish a peer chain.
... we would like to get that implemented with some kind of self-signed claim. Demonstrate validity. Then talk about more difficult things like trust anchors, chain points, and other things that we would like to propose during RWOT
... I have raised a little bit of funds.. there might be some interest. if other people have time available or want to participate in different ways let ChristopherA know.
... goal is a quick hack of self signed claims and peer attestations.
Adrian Gropper: I am interested
Tim Holborn: Perhaps post a note in https://www.w3.org/community/rww/ also - as it's a complimentary group, with additional people who are aware of linked-data
Dave Longley: If we have time we can throw something together
Manu Sporny: Anyone interested in doing thinking or implementation work?
Manu Sporny: Digital bazaar is notionally interested. Happy to help out.
Shane McCarron: Spec-Ops is interested...
Christopher Allen: Thank you!
Manu Sporny: This is all to the good. We need implementations for VC... and this is part of it,.

Topic: Verifiable Claims RC-2 Draft Charter Feedback

Manu Sporny: We developed this and send it out at the beginning of August. We have received no feedback.
... pinged every week.
Tim Holborn: Planning to review the charter still. No formal feedback yet.
David Ezell: I have concerns. I know that we have a session planned for VC at F2F in Lisbon. I am letting you know that having that session sends the right message to management. I would like to keep that session.
... let's work together to develop the content and convey the concerns about the delays.
Manu Sporny: Current plan is to try to socialize it widely at W3C. Be careful about how we say things about the involvement of W3M. It would be good to get some feedback from Wendy before TPAC.
... we need to know what is happening or if they are just too busy.
David Ezell: I think it is doubtful that it is willful ignoring.
... I don't know what is going on in W3C. Maybe they are trying to not cloud the water with other issues because of all the things on the ACs table.
Manu Sporny: Two opportunities. On Wednesday there is an unconference portion. Also during the Web Payments IG meeting. We have a VC session there as well.
Manu Sporny: We will continue to reach out to Wendy and MS. Google as well.
Christopher Allen: +Q To a certain point I'm proceeding even if W3C does not.
Pindar Wong: +1 ChristpherA
Christopher Allen: I am proceeding even if W3C does not. We have several years of maturity. There are lots of people in the BC area who are interested in interoperability. There aren't other soltuions for us.
Adrian Gropper: Is it possible to know who at MS is involved in the conversation?
Manu Sporny: Mike Champion. Anthony Nadlin. Daniel Buchner. Kim Cameron and his team. Microsoft doesn't seem to be pushing back as strongly as they were at the beginning. Some other naes (scribe failure).
Adrian Gropper: I might be able to reach out top privacy / legal people.
Dave Longley: http://openid.net/foundation/leadership/ <-- "Anthony Nadalin"
Manu Sporny: Can you send me the names if you do so that I can get it assembled into a list.
... just to be clear we have no contacts with have no contacts in that side of MS.
Manu Sporny: Just to echo what ChristopherA was saying... many of us are proceeding without W3C. We have customers who want in and we need to move

Topic: Estonian E-Residency Face-to-Face

Manu Sporny: The estonian program is one of the most advanced in the world.
... we had a week long meeting in estonia where they flew in 50 to 70 people to talk about things related to verifiable claims. EResidency, EIdentity - launching things via the programs.
Tim Holborn: Brave new world...
Manu Sporny: If you want to you can apply for EResidency in Estonia. They verify who you are and then they will issue you an ID card you can use for binding agreements, open bank accounts, use certain services etc.
... sign contracts, hire people.
... They want to shift over to a more standardized ecosystem. Something that will scale more with the web. Talked to many people who are interested in VC - digital identity.
... lots of companies want ways to standardize verifiable claims.
... Next steps? Give people information on the VCTF and let them join. Manu is on the advisory board of the eResidency program.
Pindar Wong: Thanks Manu!
... they are planning on meeting again in a year. If anyone has a chance of going, I urge you to do so. They have more foresight than most.

Topic: Planning for W3C TPAC

Manu Sporny: The message at TPAC is that the work is starting. The kickoff meeting is at IIW. Double / Triple up on travel. We have a charter that W3C is reviewing. We are not waiting on that stuff to be approved to begin work. We will continue to build the community and move to implem entations to get things deployed.
... Two opportunities. Wednesday unconference. IG Meeting.
... socialize information. Recruit members and support.
... We need to develop a slide deck for TPAC.
... Manu will take the action for that.
... We need to have the IIW Agenda together. Rely heavily on other people in the group on presenting viewpoints.
Christopher Allen: I will not be at TPAC but Marta will be.
Christopher Allen: I will be at IIW
Christopher Allen: Work on VC. ShaneM talk about use cases. Go over the specification that we have so far. Time level setting with everyone,.
Pindar Wong: Nope

Topic: Interplanetary File System and Verifiable Claims

Manu Sporny: We started discussing this last week. It has to do with decentralized identifiers.
... We are talking with the IPFS folks. We have had a number of discussions about this.
... the main use for IPFS would be as a publically verifiable claim.
.... We are also talking with BigChainDB about VC.
... What they are focused on are putting IP ownership into blockchains. Put a signature on it. Have ownership data in a blockchain.
... build on IPFS.
.... I know that Les and Drummond are looking at DiDs as well.
Christopher Allen: We clearly identified at RWoT that making progress on decentralized IDs created from BC technologies is a good idea. Started drafting requirements. github repo from RWoT.
... most parties are avoiding the name problem to allow creation of IDs that people an claim and verify. Allow key rotation etc. Important aspect of trust anchors.
... Some people are looking at this hard already.
... These will be discussed at RWoT in October.
Christopher Allen: I also have some things I wanted to talk about with JSON-LD and chain points. There is no JSON-LD working group...
Manu Sporny: Later.
Adrian Gropper: Consenus folks are also using IPFS as part of their DiD project.
Christopher Allen: Consensys
Manu Sporny: Christian and I sat down in Estonia. We talked about having namespaced IDs and the complexity it brings to the system. Hopefully everyone would agree on a not-yet existing BC that could exist and act as a centralized source.
... we talked about areas of technical complexity we want to avoid.
Manu Sporny: While there is no JSON-LD working group, the RWoT space is a fine place to do that work.
Tim Holborn: How inbred is BC? Is it a mandatory feature of the VC work?
Manu Sporny: It depends on how far in the future you look. A number of us (christopher, adrian, DB, blockstack, respec network, parts of MS) believe that we will have to ahve some sort of decentralized legder for claims stuff.
... it naturally addresses that problem.
... for VC you can use it with BC and BC protocols. It is not an absolute requirement. For example for many years we have tied them to URLs but there are limitations there.
Dave Longley: To be clear, the lock-in occurs with HTTPS URLs
... for decentralized identifiers I think BC is a requriement. For VC not really.
Dave Longley: Decentralized identifiers are likely to be implemented as URLs, but with a new scheme where they would be located on a decentralized ledger of some sort
Christopher Allen: There are risks of putting too much info on blockchains. A lot of our work is in determinuing what is truly essential. Have persistent identifiers witout the long term risk of putting too much information on immutable ledgers.
Tim Holborn: +Comment.
... my goal is to put as little as possible. Have BC be trust anchors. To avoid the X.509 hierarchy problem.
Tim Holborn: There was work on thigns (WebDHT, IPFS, etc). I understand proof of existence and the value. I worry about overly tieing VC to BC since it might turn off some stakeholders.
Christopher Allen: As I see it VC doesn't require BC or chainpoint
Christopher Allen: But we do want compatibility with those
Manu Sporny: If we tie too closely to BC we might lose a chunk of the community. They are loosely coupled. There is no requirement for BC in VC. Rather, there are use cases where it makes a great choice.
Dave Longley: There are several layers in the design.
... We need Interoperability and we need to permit the use of BC.
Manu Sporny: You mention WebDHT. WebDHT always had the idea of a history mechanism. The more we looked at it we needed a ledger. Then the only advantage of WebDHT was a ton of data.
... because of what has happened with storage recently we think that there will not be a problem with storing identity history in the BC. Storage technology is scaling faster than the rate at which we need to allocate IDs.
Christopher Allen: Also, chainpoint is a merkle tree with only the root in a blockchain. It is up to the client to store the leaves to verify it.
... we are now putting our energy into ledgers as a way to solving the decentralized ID problem.
Dave Longley: Don't confuse "blockchain" with "proof of work"
Tim Holborn: There is a very different thing between web scale vs. social scale. 2.4Bn people on the planet don't have access to electricity for most of a day.
Christopher Allen: #RebootingWebOfTrust is working with the UN ID2020 and has a number of people working on the
... I have worked on BC a lot. I see the relationship.
Manu Sporny: We are engaging the ID202 and estonian program. We are engaging people workin gon the refugee problem.
... talked with a former bank CEO who is now working on the outreach problem.
... I think Tim's concerns are good and we have the same concerns.
Tim Holborn: Not an easy problem to solve.
Pindar Wong: Thanks everyone ... a very informative call!
Pindar Wong: Bye!