Subject: New Non-WG Mailing List: Ilc -- Discussion of mechanisms and applications for Internet-level consensus.

From: IETF Secretariat <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2017 11:39:45 -0800

A new IETF non-working group email list has been created.

List address: [email-masked]
Archive: https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/search/?email_list=ilc
To subscribe: https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ilc

Purpose:

Several applications depend on Internet-wide consensus to secure an append-only log, provide tamper-resistant timestamps, and atomically commit transactions across mutually distrustful parties with no preexisting relationship. Examples include: 

* The IETF trans working group is specifying data structures and operational mechanisms for providing secure logging and auditing of TLS server certificates, but lacks a mechanism for determining consensus among logs (or consensus about whether or not a resource should be logged). These functions are currently served by an experimental gossip protocol that can potentially be strengthened through global consensus. 

* The Stellar payment network, is used by remittance companies to trade currencies and send payments across the Internet. 

* UCSD's SPAM (Secure PAckage Manager) project relies on a secure global log both to enable revocation of previously published vulnerable software packages and to guarantee that a particular software release has been publicly available for audit (somewhat like certificate transparency). 

* Stellar has an ongoing secure naming project that aims to allow domain name owners to assign human-readable names to end-user public keys without retaining the ability to lie about those public keys undetected. 

This list is to discuss such applications, the mechanisms that can meet their consensus needs, and a potential role of the IETF in devising a stable specification for an Internet-level consensus mechanism. 

For additional information, please contact the list administrators.