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Verifiable Credentials API Telecon

Minutes for 2021-11-16

Markus Sabadello is scribing.
Manu Sporny: Welcome to VC API call, thanks to the scribe, agenda is here.
Manu Sporny: We'll be doing issue processing, currently 87 open issues.
Manu Sporny: Any updates or changes to the agenda?
Manu Sporny: Introductions, anyone new to the call?
Manu Sporny: Anyone would like to re-introduce?

Topic: Relevant Community Updates

Manu Sporny: Does anyone have relevant community updates?
Manu Sporny: One thing worth mentioning.. I'm expecting that the SVIP will have an interop plugfest, people may want to set new interop targets. There may be discussion around that.
Manu Sporny: Any other plugfests that will use the VC API?
Manu Sporny: Maybe from juancaballero ?
Manu Sporny: I know that Orie has said that he would like us to focus on did:key for use in VC API.
Manu Sporny: Digital Bazaar is interested in Ed25519Signature2020, also refresh list functionality for next plugfest.
Charles E. Lehner: I don't think "it" adds new requirements, but gets implementers to interop.
Manu Sporny: What is "it" ?
Charles E. Lehner: The interop in the test suite. There are different implementations being tested there.
Dmitri Zagidulin: One proposed requirement in one issue is for the VC API to support a use case of interactive issuer/verifier sessions.
Manu Sporny: It's a really well written issue, we should add this as an agenda item.
Dmitri Zagidulin: Sounds great
Manu Sporny: Any other community related things before we move on?

Topic: Issue Processing

<phil_l_(p1)> @Dimitri, this is of equal importance and value for the verifier sent a batch of credentials in a presentation
Manu Sporny: Markus and Orie have commented. Joe_Andrieu do you have thoughts on this?
<dmitriz> @Phil_L -- agreed
Joe Andrieu: This came up as a gap in the diagrams. The ability of a holder storage to be accessed by people other than a holder, this is up for conversation.
Joe Andrieu: I think it's a reasonable request
<orie> there are currently no defined API for Issuer->Holder flows in this api.
Adrian Gropper: This falls in the category of what is the scope of VC API for an issuer. If we start with this being in scope, then it's clear that the request can indicate whatever. But I'm not clear how we are scoping the Issuer part of the API. I think of Issuer to be separate from Holder and Verifier.
Adrian Gropper: Is the request phase in scope for the VC API.
Manu Sporny: Yes it is, because we defined it in a flow
Adrian Gropper: Then how is this special?
Joe Andrieu: The conceptual challenge with this topic is we have currently envisioned most of these endpoints to be request-response, so we don't have good support for interactive flow.
Joe Andrieu: If we want to initiate flows and then have callbacks, then that callback should be in scope. That would allow an asynchronous flow.
<orie> here is an example of issuer to holder flows using didcomm: https://identity.foundation/waci-presentation-exchange/#issuance-2
<orie> this recently got added to the waci-pex scope.
Manu Sporny: Anyone wants to push this issue forward?
<dmitriz> Orie -- oh interesting, thanks. (re the waci issuance link)
Mike Varley: If there's an issuer e.g. of a background check, this can take 24h to process. The human interaction with the issuer takes place, then there is a 24h period where the credential isn't available, then when the background check is complete you want to push it to the wallet.
Mike Varley: I think this can be solved in other ways, maybe outside of this API.
<juancaballero> steep
<orie> DIDComm is the solution! :)
Mike Varley: I work with Troy. I'm willing to let this issue sit until someone comes with a concrete use case that they want to see implemented. There may be better ways of implementing this use case that don't impact this API.
Mike Varley: E.g. the holder gets an out-of-band notification.
Mike Varley: I think it's okay for this issue to sit for now until we figure out if this is needed.
Manu Sporny: Suggestion that someone needs to come up with a concrete use case.
Adrian Gropper: Do we have a tag for "authorization"? I suggest this issue be tagged with it.
Adrian Gropper: I might be willing to be assigned this, because I think it is in part an authorization issue, and I'm available to try move all authorization issues forward.
Manu Sporny: Agree this is related to authorization, we have that tag, just added it to the issue.
Manu Sporny: (Changing Github settings to add agropper to the vc-api repo, so the issue can be assigned to him)
Adrian Gropper: I would be willing to work with other people on the previous issue 245 as well.
<dmitriz> I'd also be willing to be assigned issue 245 :)
Manu Sporny: This is done, right?
<dmitriz> (I don't think 245 is quite authorization related; orthogonal to authorization)
Orie Steele: Is the test suite published correctly? Is the NPM package published?
<juancaballero> NO COMMENT
Orie Steele: CCG should not manage NPM packages
Joe Andrieu: +1
Manu Sporny: Agree with Orie, CCG should not publish NPM packages. Any objections to this position?
Manu Sporny: Should we take it down from NPM?
<orie> btw the test suite is still rendering properly...
Joe Andrieu: Should the "w3c-ccg" name be held so it doesn't get used by others?
Manu Sporny: Anyone disagree with this statement?
<orie> but there is not "index.html" at root level
Manu Sporny: Next step is for CCG chairs to communicate this more broadly and ask for CCG consensus.
Juan Caballero: Orie mentioned in chat there is no index.html for the root.
<orie> raise an issue.
Manu Sporny: Marked this as pending close.
Manu Sporny: Orie, some background on this?
Orie Steele: We talked about what verifying a VC would mean. VP has certain requirements, but is loose in some ways. You can have a VP that has multiple VCs but doesn't itself have a proof. This was resolved in another PR.
Orie Steele: I propose we close this issue since this has been addressed in the test suite.
Orie Steele: This was resolved in test suite PR 113
Orie Steele: There are fixtures in the test suite repo which make verifying difficult. This is one of them.
Manu Sporny: I will move it to vc-api-test-suite
Orie Steele: Having it in a separate repo means we need to groom the issues here.
Manu Sporny: I will transfer these as well to vc-api-test-suite
Orie Steele: Yep makes sense
Manu Sporny: (Technical difficulties with moving issues)
Manu Sporny: Mike_Varley any comment on this one?
Manu Sporny is scribing.
<juancaballero> sorry technical difficulties here too
Markus Sabadello: This has to do with the earlier versions of the API where the API was also composing credentials, this particular issue is about scenario where API reaches out to datastore to get claim values.
<orie> in a world where issuer = (template, args) => Promise<vc>
Markus Sabadello: Instead of client composing credential, client only calls API w/ part of the information.
Markus Sabadello is scribing.
Manu Sporny: Overtaken by events? We don't do this anymore?
Manu Sporny: We made the design decision that you call the API after you get all the information
Mike Varley: I think we made this out of scope.
Manu Sporny: Closed this issue.
Orie Steele: It's somehow related to templates. Ability to issue a batch of thousands of credentials.
Orie Steele: Community opinion seems to be to not support batches and call API separately for each credential.
Orie Steele: If we want to support this, many additional issues may come up (e.g. around revocation). Batching is complicated.
Markus Sabadello: The idea that there would be a template is similar to previous issue -- some sort of composing happens inside of implementations. This is out of scope for this reason, we don't want to do composing as well as reasons that Orie mentioned. [scribe assist by Manu Sporny]
Manu Sporny: Any objections to closing?
Manu Sporny: Closing that one
Markus Sabadello: I know we want to process issues in this order, can we do #51? It's a duplicate? [scribe assist by Manu Sporny]
Manu Sporny: Posting a comment that the group decided batching is out of scope for this version of the API.
Manu Sporny: Any objections to closing?
Manu Sporny: Closed that issue.
Ted Thibodeau: Do we have a label "defer to next version"? Batching is not an anti-pattern by itself. It's fine to not have it in this version, but maybe we should pick it up in future versions?
Manu Sporny: I think if it's important enough for people, new issues will be opened.
Manu Sporny: I tried to be careful with saying "out of scope for this version".
<dmitriz> what if.. we tag it, but ALSO close it?
Manu Sporny: Do you want us to do something else?
Ted Thibodeau: I would prefer to have a tag so it's easy to search.
Manu Sporny: I'm happy if people want to revisit this in a future version.
<dmitriz> yessssss +1, more memes.
Orie Steele: We should have more memes in the descriptoin.
Manu Sporny: Anyone else thinks we should re-open the batching topic and label it for v2.
Ted Thibodeau: It could remain closed but still have the label.
Manu Sporny: Okay
Manu Sporny: Also applying the same "v2" label and closing.
Manu Sporny: If there are no objections, I want to take a look at the architectural overview PR.
Manu Sporny: Any objections?

Topic: Pull Request Review

Manu Sporny: Joe put together diagrams of the ecosystem, we discussed this quite a bit, there seemed to be buy-in. agropper objected and asked for explanatory text. You authored that text.
Manu Sporny: Some people pushed back, saying this is about the diagram, not about the introduction. Dmitri seemed to have some concerns, Joe responded.
Manu Sporny: Agropper you could agree that we create a new issue and new PR to talk about the introductory text and consider this orthogonal to the diagram; or you assert that you want to discuss the text as part of the PR and it has to go in together with the PR.
Adrian Gropper: IIRC, you asked me not to reference the diagram specifically. I then chose to move up to the introduction to further my goal. I don't have a strong feel. I think the issue of the introduction needs to be taken up, it's a scoping issue for everything that follows. I don't particularly care if we do it as part of this PR, or as an issue.
<orie> seperate PRs are preferred.
Manu Sporny: How about we open a new issue that says we need to update the introduction to talk about the things you mention. agropper I would like you to copy your text into a new issue about updating the introduction to speak about delegation. You could raise this as a PR.
Manu Sporny: Separate this out from the diagram, this could remove the objection to merge the diagram, then we look at your PR. Does that work for you?
Adrian Gropper: Yes
Manu Sporny: (Creating new issue 252 with agropper 's text)
Manu Sporny: PR 237 should now be unblocked. dmitriz do you have concerns?
Joe Andrieu: Just wanted to see if my response addresses dmitriz 's concerns
Dmitri Zagidulin: I think my main ask is it would be great to have a key to the shapes of the diagrams, to tell what the ovals, rectangles, etc. mean.
Manu Sporny: I will re-base and merge
Manu Sporny: Let's talk about next week. It's Thanksgiving in the US, many meetings are canceled, I propose we do the same. We can review PRs in the week after that.
Manu Sporny: Will this cause problems for cel or markus_sabadello ?
Charles E. Lehner: That's okay
Markus Sabadello: For me too
Orie Steele: +1 To no meetings in december
Manu Sporny: Therefore no meeting next week, we will meet again after Thanksgiving, I suggest the we then have no meetings in December to give people a break.
Manu Sporny: Any last comments?
<tallted> so next call is Jan 5 ?
<mike_varley> thanks all!
Manu Sporny: Thanks to the scribe, thank you everyone, we were super productive. Happy Thanksgiving to those who celebrate it. bye
TallTed, no, next meeting is Nov 29
TallTed, sorry Nov 30