2023-03-22 TSPTF Meeting Notes

Meeting Date & Time

This Task Force meets three out of every four Wednesdays (the fourth Wednesday is the Technology Stack WG plenary meeting). There are two meetings each Wednesday to serve different time zones:

  • NA/EU meeting: 08:00-09:00 PT / 16:00-17:00 UTC
  • APAC meeting: 18:00-19:00 PT / 02:00-03:00 UTC

See the Calendar of ToIP Meetings for exact meeting dates, times and Zoom links.

Zoom Meeting Recordings

Attendees

NA/EU:

APAC:

Agenda Items and Notes (including all relevant links)

TimeAgenda ItemLeadNotes
3 min
  • Start recording
  • Welcome & antitrust notice
  • New member introductions
  • Agenda review
Leads
  • Antitrust Policy Notice: Attendees are reminded to adhere to the meeting agenda and not participate in activities prohibited under antitrust and competition laws. Only members of ToIP who have signed the necessary agreements are permitted to participate in this activity beyond an observer role.
  • New Members:
2 minReview of previous action itemsLeads
  • ACTION: Drummond Reed to start a GitHub discussion on the question of TSP Workshops and also add it to the agenda for our March 22 meeting.
  • ACTION: Drummond Reed to send an email to the Technology Stack WG mailing list and post to the ToIP Slack with a Last Call for Proposals.
5 minsLAST CALL FOR PROPOSALS & prep for TSP WorkshopsDrummond Reed 

After today's Proposal #3 Part B from Wenjing Chu, we need to know if there are any other proposals in our proposal stage. If so, please speak up now.

Secondly, Neil Thomson and others have suggested that as we move into our consolidation stage, we are going to need one or more "Special TSP Workshops" of at least 2-3 hour duration.

APAC:

Jo Spencer asked if "the end of the proposal stage" will mean that we won't continue looking at other protocols. Drummond said that Wenjing's presentation today will address part of that.

Michael Michael observed that each of the four proposals take a different approach to describing their vision and proposed design for the TSP — like describing four animals that all have four legs but are not the same animal (Jo Spencer said "camels and dromedaries as well as horses and zebras"). He pointed to this new Github discussion thread he started that asks questions about how we will proceed with the consolidation phase. Wenjing suggested that his presentation may partially answer Michael's question.

40 minsProposal #3 Part B: Wenjing ChuWenjing Chu 

Wenjing will present Part B of his Proposal #3. A handful of screenshots from his presentation are shown below.

10 minsQ&A on the aboveAll

NA/EU:

Daniel Hardman asked what Wenjing meant by "backwards compatibility" for ITDP.

  • Wenjing clarified that all of his examples were about compatibility with legacy technologies with an eye to making adoption of ITDP as easy as possible. He does not mean that those technologies would not need any change at all.
  • Wenjing explained that his examples of how ITDP could fit with existing protocols like Aries, KERI, DWN, and OIDC would all evolve evolutionary paths for those protocols.

Clare asked about the mobile use case on slide 63 — would that include the mobile device? And how would that be implemented?

  • Wenjing gave an explanation of how the mobile device could speak existing protocols to supporting systems.

Darrell O'Donnell: Are we looking for backwards compatibility now (compatible to what?) Or are we planning for backwards compatibility?

Neil Thomson: "Observation - a large part of interop is likely to be on governance and verifiable authority (initially) vs technical compatibility. For example, OIDC provides a non-DID identifier that OIDC is prepared to provide a verifiable authority (signing of the identifier) to providing backing -> VID"

APAC: 

Jo Spencer: MATTR have been providing an OIDC <-> decentralised solution bridge for a long time. https://mattr.global/resources/articles/introducing-oidc-credential-provider/

Michael Michael: Slide 67- It appears the use of ITDP is limited to being a "systems interconnect" protocol ...and not a universal Trust Spanning Layer Protocol?

Michael Michael: Slide 69 - don't we have to use or limit our designs to decentralized technologies and not have "black boxes" for wrapping centralized services?

  • Drummond Reed: For interop with legacy technologies/trust systems, that “wrapping” is actually quite valuable.

Sam Smith asked whether the assumption of greater "liquidity" in terms of trusted connections may not lead to the positive "pressure" that Wenjing refers to, because systems are vulnerable by virtue of the weakest system they are connected to.

  • Wenjing replied that ITDP by itself may not be sufficient for higher levels of trust, just at a base layer that everyone using ITDP shares. Higher trust can be layered over with higher level protocols.

Jo Spencer said that Wenjing's presentation made him think about the topic of synochronous, semi-synchronous, asynchronous, etc. and that that has not come up much in the proposals.

  • Wenjing felt that ITDP should be able to accommodate all of those communications patterns. And that we should study them all as we design it.

We closed the call by talking about how to proceed with the consolidation phase.

  • Jo Spencer suggested the focus should be on alignment. Examining each of the proposals to see what is equivalent and what is not.
  • Michael Michael suggests that alignment requires a set of categories for examining alignment.
  • There was a suggestion that we begin the first TSP Workshop with a review of the ToIP Technology Architecture Specification V1.0 as the bedrock source of our requirements. If so, Wenjing Chu volunteered to lead that review.
  • Drummond Reed suggested the following action item:

ACTION: All TSPTF MEMBERS: Consider your suggestions for the best way to proceed with the consolidation phase and then to post your suggestion(s) to the relevant Github discussion thread (or start a new one if needed).


  • Review decisions/action items
  • Planning for next meeting 
LeadsNext week is the Technology Stack WG Plenary meeting, so our next meeting as a task force will be Wednesday April 5. The primary agenda item will be discussing TSP Workshops and how best to proceed with the consolidation stage.

Screenshots/Diagrams (numbered for reference in notes above)

#1


#2


#3


#4


#5


#6


#7


Decisions

  • None.

Action Items

  • ACTION: All TSPTF MEMBERS: Consider your suggestions for the best way to proceed with the consolidation phase and then to post your suggestion(s) to the relevant Github discussion thread (or start a new one if needed).