Baseline Protocol Baseline Hackathon 2020, 9 Dec 2020

Previous Meeting Next Meeting

⏯

youtube image

►

From YouTube: Baseline Hackathon 2020 Phonebook Challenge

Description

The backgrounder on the Baseline Protocol Hackathon 2020 Challenge #1, codenamed "Phonebook".
https://bitcoin.co/hackathon/baseline/onboard
Details here: https://github.com/ethereum-oasis/baseline-roadmap/issues/166

A

Hi, I'm john wilpert with the baseline protocol and we're here with evan mcmullen and italo borsamp, and they are two of the judges for the. What we call the phonebook challenge were the baseline protocol, hackathon 2020 and they're, going to tell you about what you need to know to get started. What your, where the resources are to make sure you're successful and where, in the repo you can find the materials and the locations to do your work italo evan uh welcome, tell us about what you're, what you're going to be. Judging.

B

Thank you so much for having us, john. um So first I want to invite everyone listening to join us at hackathon 2020-phone book on the baseline slack, uh the high-level problem that we will be solving uh or the high-level problem that that we're tackling together is that companies baselining need to find each other and need to make sure that they are indeed the companies that they think these counterparties are.

B

Is the coca-cola really coca-cola, so we as a team, are already working on a solution for that um that we refer to as a directory or phone book, but we have a problem that we need your help to solve. Inside of that, we need your help testing out how to demonstrate this phone book an actual implementation, so itala is going to describe where you can find some awesome resources to support your approach.

C

Yeah, basically, the solution uh that you need to build uh will need will be based in two main elements. uh One is the the baseline heifers implementation, the first baseline reference implementation that is known as bri-1 it's available in the in the baseline repo I'll share my screen, and so in the in the in the challenge description. uh You see all these links. uh One of them is for the the beer, one uh repo uh and basically it's here uh inside the baseline. You have the examples bri one uh bri one and.

A

That's the baseline, that's the first implementation of the of the core baseline protocol interfaces. The interfaces are generic. The bri is a very opinionated way of of implementing those interfaces right.

C

Yes, yes, and uh it's ready to run so the first first thing I suggest everybody that joins this challenge is simply run this uh example, uh and you see the the communication being established between alice and bob, in this case, okay, using a net server. So all the dockers, all the configurations are there, and one important point here is that the work group that is built in this example it's built using uh gwt invitations. Okay, it's something that happens in the nets implementation, it's where you describe.

A

And that's for people who don't know is the messaging protocol. That's in bri one could be amqp. It could be any other messaging protocol, that's compliant with the standard right, but we're this one happens to use nets.

C

Exactly thank you, john, and uh so basically what what you you do to build. The workflow is to build this work group, okay, uh and what we are uh we want in this challenge is to replace the way this. This uh work group is built uh not by replacing the gwt battery tokens. You can uh use the net uh server and digitality barrier tokens, but the attributes that you need in order to create this gwt barrier token, you will retrieve from a did. Okay, so the id is a decentralized identifier.

C

uh We explain everything here in the in the description um of the.

A

Channel go more into that, so I mean really what we were discussing before. The call was that you know the phone book is a little misleading right that we're not building a phone book. Here. uh Your team is working on a particular application of of discovery, uh and you know for baselining uh companies, but the general the.

A

What what needs to happen for this to to take the uh the protocol to the next level is to develop and implement uh the ability to create a work group that has multiple companies that are working together uh in a baseline framework. uh You need to build. You need to be able to build the set of companies in the work group and in the way we've done it up until now is with an org registry and you're, suggesting that um the next step is to use the did standard to build.

A

That um work group without an org registry is that oh correct.

C

Yeah yeah, okay, so.

A

So take us through. So that's what the the the the challenge is to implement a did approach to building a work group in baseline.

C

A

C

Yeah and uh just with the addition of this well-known configuration specification, uh that is something that links to the domain yeah, basically,.

A

So you're not flipping over to so what would be what what looks different in in uh in this approach? So when, when somebody's done, when somebody's achieved the challenge, um today, we have the baseline protocol repo, it looks like x and when they're, when they've, when we've accepted the challenge, uh submission it'll, look different. What.

C

Does that look.

A

Like today, where yeah so, for example, there's the org registry components in the in the in the repo yeah are those going to change? Are we going to ignore them? uh Are we going to add something different?

A

What what is it? What is the contestant going to do in there.

C

Today, uh in the in the in the reference.

B

Implementation.

C

That we have, uh we use the org hazardry uh to store the the data, the attributes that we need to establish communication between the parties. In that case, this organ has three. uh In the in that case I mean the the bri one. uh It contains the the net endpoint and uh uh the some public keys right uh in after this challenge happening. What we expect to have is to have that replaced by a solution where you will retrieve you will only the only thing you need to know about the counterparties are their domains.

C

So, if you you, you have the website of each participant, you will be able to retrieve uh the well-known well-known did configuration file that stores the information to establish connections uh using the attributes in the did.

C

So, basically, this the id is trustable, because all the information in this file will be signed by the same id, and you have the same uh attributes that were started previously in the org hash. Three will be retrieved from these. The id doc document.

A

So you're just gonna ignore the the the the library in the repo that has the org registry and implement um a different library that will go out to a a compliant parties website, pull the did file.

A

That should be that yeah, as you were explaining to me, did standard which the link is right there in the uh in the in the issue for those who haven't played with dids before there's a file you're going to put you know, the uh the compliant party is going to put that file into their website in a well-known place and that all did implementations, depo, employ and uh and then you're going to read those at the the attributes of that did from there right.

A

So, instead of having org registry set up on chain, you just have to add a file to your website so effectively the picture I'm getting at dollo and evan. If you could confirm, is the is th. This is simply uh the the two thousand dollar uh uh challenge here is for uh implementing any work. Group you'd, like doing anything you'd like it to do using this method, which involves going out to a website grabbing the did file and constructing the work group from that, as opposed to uh on chain org registry is.

C

A

C

Exactly yeah yeah, okay.

A

So that's a pretty straightforward piece of work.

C

A

So how? How would I start where, where in the code base are we going to have do we have a file in the in the repo that gives somebody the the did um file structure that they have to employ and they're going to have to set up a couple websites to do this right to demonstrate it.

C

Yes, actually in the in the bri one uh example, your red have the docker uh configurations to build the the uh each corporation here in the case alice and bob. So what you need to do is only to use the same uh uh dockers that you have here, define it in the in the heavens implementation and just add something. On top of that to to add this file, okay, uh just uh explain a bit better. How is the process to onboard a company to this baseline phonebook solution?

C

uh You, you just need to create a did for your company. If you don't have that one you need to generate the the well-known did. Configuration file is store that well known the configuration file and uh we don't know we don't have a phone book ui yet, but uh then you would just hash your domain in this phone book. uh This part is optionally, not implemented right now, but this is how to to have your company ready to do that right. Yeah.

A

Number four: you don't really need to have right in that uh this, the work group will work even if there isn't, uh if you don't do that that last step and add it to this, you know universal org registry.

C

Yes, yes exactly and what you will do is to come here in the beer I want, uh and in these alice and bob instances uh you will create this. The id is stored is the id in the well-known url and then you will retrieve uh the information from each other's uh endpoint communications through this uh did configuration and not through the the the org has three like it was being done previously.

C

Okay, so that's the main difference, uh and basically, what you need to know is to to how to run this bri one and in order to generate the did configuration uh file and create the ids for your company in this case. In this example, for alice and bob uh we are talking, uh you can use the the def uh plugin. What.

A

Does death mean for those who don't know.

C

Oh sorry, that is the the decentralized agent framework. Okay, uh it's a library uh that gives you the ability and and most of the services you you need to manage your dids, so it can uh create new dids uh signed vcs uh vcs are very fibo credentials uh at the stations that are signed by this identity, this decentralized identifier.

C

uh So it's it's a a framework that implements implements most of the things that you need in a you know: decentralized uh identity world. uh So you won't need to spend time understanding uh uh it's good to know what the ids are, but you don't need to spend time writing code uh to have that working. Okay, that's what I want to make clear here.

C

Just by using uh these plugins and uh the the dev uh implementation, you will be able to generate your the ids and uh check the the uh the id to generate the did configuration file and check uh the id configuration from any specific domain. Okay and all the instructions.

B

Are here real, quick, sorry, I'm deaf is an experimental library and we are excited to evolve it to support the baseline community and would love to receive any feedback so know that it's not um necessarily a community adopted standard. This is an experimental library that we are developing to make this process easier. So.

A

This is a resource that that you can use. You could implement it any way you like, but this isn't one way that you that you can speed your your work up is by using this particular library.

C

A

That leads go ahead. Sorry.

C

Yeah we have here instructions on how to generate the ids and how to uh check the one to generate the well-known deconfiguration. So most of the things are ready. uh You just need to to use the pieces, and uh I think that the most important thing in this challenge is that we are not defining how the the attributes for the communication will be stored.

C

So if you want to to make that in a way that it's not totally uh dependent on the net implementation from the bri one, it would be great uh and um yeah feel free to propose your solution in this on how to store these attributes.

A

Thanks atala that that, I think, makes things pretty clear so it to summarize uh the the task is to uh construct a work group using the baseline protocol framework, and uh you know an alice and bob if you will, and to establish alice and bob's connection in the work flow using dids instead of a manually, develop manually, implemented work group uh library that we have already in there called the org registry.

A

So we're moving on from org registry to something a little bit more extensible a little more standards based, and we want to demonstrate that and see where the problems are italia. One last question: where, where will where do you see the hard work in this challenge uh likely coming from where? Where? Where would? If you were uh embarking on this challenge yourself?

A

What and knowing what you know where's the hard work gonna come from where, where is the new thinking and the I in the innovation? Gonna have to be applied.

C

Yeah I I believe that the first thing is this, uh because we are talking here about a phone book, but it doesn't exist. So it's it's interesting, because actually you will be able to discover uh other parties only by using their domain, uh and actually we are talking here about the the base of the solution for a phone book. We will have a phone book and a ui later, but uh what you are using here is the basics.

C

You know uh by the domain of your of the participants, how to get the the attributes to communicate with them. uh Through these well-known configuration files.

A

Mean you mean the hard part will be finding the file or uh no.

C

No you you will need to to uh in the bri one. You need to create this uh this, uh uh uh this con configuration before running the the workflow itself, so you need to create this did configuration file in one part uh in in the website of one uh participant and in the other participant, and then they will discover themselves uh uh through the the domain. So uh basically in the br one i1, you have dockers, so you will need to understand how you will do that using the docker configuration that is there.

C

uh So I'm talking here about the technical uh challenge that you will have and later this way of retrieving from the did document, uh the id document, uh the attributes uh to establish the communication. So basically, this is the the the thing that I think you will spend more time.

A

All right thanks a lot intello and uh anybody that has further questions can find uh italo and team and evan and uh and the other folks that are supporting this uh kyle thomas, I think, is getting involved and others on the slack which you can get invited into from baseline baseline dash protocol.org, and we hope to see you there thanks. Everybody.

C