The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) held a blockchain seminar and called for the creation of public standards for blockchain technology

We are living in the digital age. Everyone loves technology and believes that technology is the only driving force for industrial innovation. Blockchain technology is one of them.

Public blockchain projects are booming, and many companies are also actively creating their own private blockchain platforms. So far, the use cases of blockchain have covered a wide range, including financial derivatives trading, global supply chain management, etc.

What sparks will be created when different blockchains collide? We still don’t know yet. But the industry agrees that blockchain standards should be developed to increase industry competition and avoid wasted efforts.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the most authoritative and influential international neutral technical standards organization in the field of Web technology. W3C has always intended to create an online payment system.

Last week, the W3C held its first blockchain workshop, a meeting designed to gauge the industry’s readiness to create common standards and what needs to be done to achieve them.

Some participants thought it was too early to create standards, arguing that blockchain technology is still in its early stages and setting standards too early would hinder its development. However, most people agreed that it was a business necessity.

Christopher Allen, an engineer at blockchain company Blockstream, told CoinDesk: In order to further develop and cooperate in the blockchain industry, it is necessary for our data formats and APIs to be consistent.

Data First

Interoperability is important.

Most participants are interested in creating standardized APIs and raw data formats so that both new and old programs can communicate with the blockchain.

The primary goals are key management and payment protocols.

Developers from Ripple’s Interledger Protocol and Lightning Network, both of which aim to build payment systems, also participated in the discussion to study how to make transactions compatible between the two systems.

Allen said: Certain systems don't have to remain in opposition forever. In the long run, it will only affect the future development of the community.

Allen cited the example of SSL, a security technology he developed in the 1990s that is recognized by the Web community as a secure protocol for data transmission, to illustrate the importance of establishing standards.

There are also many blockchain industry giants participating in the conference, such as Eris Industries, IBM Blockchain Lab, MIT Digital Currency Project, Ethereum, etc. However, there are relatively few participants from the Bitcoin industry.

Participants in the Bitcoin industry play an important role in creating common standards for wallet APIs, including how to write signature blocks to the blockchain, how to store block information, and how to filter information stored off-chain.

Hardware authentication is another hotly debated topic.

Most companies use software dongles to authenticate financial transactions, but hardware devices are rarely used. Many conference participants believe that SD cards and biometric features in users' smartphones can be used to verify identity.

Identity Authentication

Authentication is a perpetual topic. Doug Schepers, W3C technical expert and liaison for this meeting, said:

People are fascinated by the problem of identity because the current authentication system (username and password login) creates many problems and has not yet been solved.

It is safer and more convenient to use public and private key transactions similar to those on blockchain.

We are not far from the standardization of identity authentication. Because Microsoft is already a member of W3C. In addition, Microsoft's open source identity authentication platform has been successfully released. Members of the Samsung mobile browser team also communicated with Microsoft at the meeting and expressed their intention to join the project.

Nowadays, data breaches are becoming more and more frequent, and even large companies such as Anthem and Swift are constantly reporting data breaches. Therefore, the development of identity authentication technology is very important.

Although the development of blockchain identity authentication technology has been quite effective, some traditional companies still express concerns about it.

Some traditional financial service providers said that due to the immutability of the blockchain system, it is easy to forge and steal accounts.

Some people are also worried that the so-called blockchain identity authentication system simply stores all identity information on a master key.

Smart Contracts and the Internet of Things

The meeting also discussed the impact of such public standards on non-financial applications of blockchain.

The non-financial applications mentioned in the meeting were mainly the transactions of cryptocurrency licenses (contracts) on the blockchain.

The Internet of Things (IoT) can benefit from this transparent transaction model. Many people believe that IoT devices are transactions between machines, and therefore are very suitable for being driven by blockchain smart contracts.

Take a simple IoT device example: a washing machine that breaks down can automatically detect the problem, retrieve warranty information, and order parts.

Most IoT devices are built on a centralized hierarchical system, which is vulnerable to attacks. In addition, current IoT systems are device-centric. In this model, users may have several apps for different devices at the same time.

Blockchain can create a user-centric IoT environment.

Next step

The meeting seemed to be quite productive.

During the conference, we witnessed the establishment of a digital asset community. Many other types of communities are also emerging. These community members will contribute to the standardization process of blockchain technology.

The W3C blockchain community group will continue to promote the standardization of blockchain technology. Schepers said that a meeting for browser service providers will be held later.

The success of this blockchain discussion precisely demonstrates its importance.

Many similar conferences are superficial, with participants touting how blockchain can revolutionize various industries but not mentioning specific technical details.

But developing public standards will enable interoperability not only between blockchain technologies and networks, but also between humans and technology.

Arvind Narayanan, assistant professor of computer science at Princeton University and keynote speaker at the conference, said:

The blockchain industry is trying to solve social problems through technical solutions. Anything that involves people is a great responsibility. And public standards are a key part of it... because they give people the opportunity to reflect on themselves.