Subject: Re: [dispatch] Introducing the Interledger Protocol

From: Anton Tveretin <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 02 Jun 2016 02:22:48 +0500

Hello Adrian,
What's the difference (where's the border) between this WG and Payments WG? It seems to me there is an overlap with my format, NGMTP Class 9. Parts of it I publish on my site. The first is AC3H for Account Chain, the second is CoABoS for Certificate of Acceptance/Bill of Service. I hope to make it more readable soon :), better add some introductory memo.
The elementary thing I consider a bank account as a legal contract. The contract is based on exchange of instruments (payment orders, advises, statements etc.)
Regards,
Anton.

---

From: Adrian Hope-Bailie <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 2 Jun 2016 16:16:05 +0200

Hi Anton,

I wasn't aware of a Payments WG at IETF or of NGMTP.
Can you provide a link to some resources or a mailing list archive so i can
get myself up to speed?

All I can find after some searching is a draft spec for a new
mail-transport protocol (and then can't find any reference to "Class 9".

Based on the description in your email I can speculate that the main
differences are:

   1. The base component of the Interledger is a ledger. It is simply a
   system that keeps a record of the current balances of a particular asset
   for one or more accounts. i.e. It is not just limited to bank accounts and
   does not concern itself with legal implications of balances changing in a
   ledger.
   2. Interledger is specifically focused on payments, it is not a generic
   transport protocol that can be used to transfer digital assets, that is
   it's core function.
   3. Interledger's architecture is modular (it's a protocol stack) and
   functions such as publishing and consuming Certificates of Acceptance or
   Bill of Service are handled right up in the application layer (possibly by
   a use case specific protocol). The majority of the work on Interledger is
   on the lower layers, ledgers, connectors and the protocols used to route
   payments and get quotes for payments.

Adrian

On 1 June 2016 at 23:22, Anton Tveretin <[email-masked]> wrote:

> Hello Adrian,
> What's the difference (where's the border) between this WG and Payments
> WG? It seems to me there is an overlap with my format, NGMTP Class 9. Parts
> of it I publish on my site. The first is AC3H for Account Chain, the second
> is CoABoS for Certificate of Acceptance/Bill of Service. I hope to make it
> more readable soon :), better add some introductory memo.
> The elementary thing I consider a bank account as a legal contract. The
> contract is based on exchange of instruments (payment orders, advises,
> statements etc.)
> Regards,
> Anton.
>

---

From: Adam Roach <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 2 Jun 2016 10:59:21 -0500

On 6/2/16 09:16, Adrian Hope-Bailie wrote:
> Can you provide a link to some resources or a mailing list archive so 
> i can get myself up to speed?

I'm not sure offhand which Working Group Anton is referring to. As far 
as I'm able to turn up, there have only been two working groups in the 
IETF's history that dealt squarely with payment-related technologies:

The ISPP (Internet Secure Payments Protocol) WG concluded in January of 
1997. The charter at its time of conclusion is here: 
https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/ispp/charter/

The TRADE (Internet Open Trading Protocols) concluded in Feburary of 
2005. The charter at its time of conclusion is here: 
https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/trade/charter/

Both working groups predate any centrally-coordinated mailing list 
archiving by the IETF, and the archives of their mailing list 
discussions no longer appear to be online. They also date back to a 
period of time in which internet drafts were aggressively removed from 
the internet after their six-month expiration period, so tracing their 
work output to the generated RFCs is not terribly straightforward.

TRADE's main output relic appears to be the Internet Open Trading 
Protocol (IOTP), documented in RFCs 2801 - 2803, and RFC 3504. There 
appears to have been an effort started to define a v2 of the protocol, 
but that work does not appear to have borne fruit. See also 
<https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/apps-discuss/IrAZ4SN99WHCLEii7gZvTPibTNY>.

I can't figure out whether ISPP produced any RFCs at all.

/a

---

From: Тверетин Антон Сергеевич <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 09 Jun 2016 01:28:32 +0500

Surely, I refer to the Payment WG at W3C.
I did not know about efforts here. But ISPP charter reminds me of a problem.
There is good software to manage business accounts (based on digital signatures), but not for non-business accounts, and something strange for e-money. But in practice, there could be no difference between B2B and B2C. When I pay to my ISP, this is B2B payment if I use the Net for business, or B2C if I do not. But the amount is the same, really nothing changes.
So "retail payments" is a non-existing problem. Possibly this is the reason why ISPP could not produce anything.

I publish NGMTP specs at <http://www.fit-rulez.narod.ru/ngmtp/>. Currently, only "account chain" is there.
Possibly, we should discuss some decisions in Q&A format.

---

From: "Cullen Jennings (fluffy)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 9 Jun 2016 16:28:51 +0000

Just as some random links that might be useful for IETF folks ..

You can find more info about W3C payments WG at 
https://www.w3.org/Payments/WG/

It does not seem to have much to do with what is proposed here. 

Note there is a W3C community group for the interledger work. This is roughly equivalent to the IETF non WG email list and does not indicate an endorsement or course of action for the W3C. It is at 

https://www.w3.org/community/interledger/

It's not clear to me how you join the mailing list without agreeing to certain legal terms but the archives seem to be public at 

https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-interledger/

> On Jun 8, 2016, at 2:28 PM, Тверетин Антон Сергеевич <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> _______________________________________________
> dispatch mailing list
> [email-masked]
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/dispatch

---

From: Adrian Hope-Bailie <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 10 Jun 2016 12:11:06 +0200

I co-chair the Web Payments WG and the Interledger Payments CG at W3C so
happy to dig into the difference if there is any confusion.

Briefly, the Payments WG has a very specific mandate as explained in it's
charter. [1]

I would summarize this as defining a mechanism for a machine readable
payment request to be handled by some mediator system (usually a user
agent) on the Web and if necessary passed on to a payment application
capable of handling that request and returning a response.

This work is completely payment method agnostic and intended to simply
define standard interfaces and message formats for the exchange of
information in initiating payment.

The first deliverables of this WG are a browser API for handling payment
requests and there are other specs in the works for an HTTP API, a payment
app registration/invocation standard and a number of message definitions
for well known payment methods like card payments, and SEPA based payments.

In contrast the Interledger work is an attempt to define an entirely new
payment method/scheme specifically for the Internet. It is a ground up
protocol stack for actually making a payment (including settlement of
funds) that is not specific to a payment network or ledger/custodian system.

We think of Interledger as the TCP/IP for digital assets, where TCP/IP
moves packets Interledger moves money.

We have proposed a BoF session for Berlin and I will be able to dive deeper
into the work of both groups if there is interest.

[1] - https://www.w3.org/Payments/WG/charter-201510.html

On 9 June 2016 at 18:28, Cullen Jennings (fluffy) <[email-masked]> wrote:

> Note there is a W3C community group for the interledger work. This is
> roughly equivalent to the IETF non WG email list and does not indicate an
> endorsement or course of action for the W3C. It is at
>
> It's not clear to me how you join the mailing list without agreeing to
> certain legal terms but the archives seem to be public at
>
> > There is good software to manage business accounts (based on digital
> signatures), but not for non-business accounts, and something strange for
> e-money. But in practice, there could be no difference between B2B and B2C.
> When I pay to my ISP, this is B2B payment if I use the Net for business, or
> B2C if I do not. But the amount is the same, really nothing changes.
> > So "retail payments" is a non-existing problem. Possibly this is the
> reason why ISPP could not produce anything.
> >
> > I publish NGMTP specs at <http://www.fit-rulez.narod.ru/ngmtp/>.
> Currently, only "account chain" is there.
> >>  <
> https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/apps-discuss/IrAZ4SN99WHCLEii7gZvTPibTNY
> >.
> >>