[dmarc-ietf] Re: Proposed Recharter to Conclude the ARC Experiment

[Seth Blank <[e-mail]>]

At this point, the charter is at its end. Personally, hearing from Richard
and Bron (and some private messages directly to me), I'm more comfortable
now moving ARC to obsolete/historic prior to a successor like DKIM2 being
published.

Really the question now seems to be about choosing one of three paths:
1. Take this document on now in a rechartered DMARC WG to conclude ARC.
2. Shutter DMARC WG as intended, and take on this document via AD
sponsorship or some other more directed approach.
3. Let this document be published with DKIM2 as part of a cluster of
documents concluding ARC are shifting to DKIM2 as explicit successor.

So far, as Chair, I'm hearing several people ask for [1], and not much on
[2] or [3].

Seth

On Sun, Feb 1, 2026 at 10:00 AM Douglas Foster <
[e-mail]> wrote:

> Trying to stick to the charter issue:
> Since there has been no previous process to assemble data about the uses
> and failures of ARC, it seems to me that the charter should start this
> process.
>
> The proposed language to kill ARC presupposes a consensus that has not
> been established through any IETF process.
>
> If the chairs find consensus on termination, then I suppose there is a
> paperwork process to formally document why.
>
> Doug
>
> On Fri, Jan 30, 2026, 11:30 AM Barry Leiba <[e-mail]> wrote:
>
>> Thanks for getting this started, Trent!
>>
>> For other, I want to highlight one thing Trent said:
>>
>> By all means, read the draft to get a sense of what work is being
>> proposed.  But this is not the time to discuss the draft -- this is
>> the time to look at the charter and discuss whether we're interested
>> in taking on the task of wrapping up and documenting the ARC
>> experiment and its results.  If the answer to that is "yes" and we
>> recharter to do it, *then* we'll start discussing the details of the
>> draft.
>>
>> So, again, the charter proposal:
>> https://github.com/ietf-artarea/charters/blob/main/dmarc/charter.md
>>
>> Barry
>>
>> On Fri, Jan 30, 2026 at 11:23 AM Trent Adams
>> <tadams=[e-mail]> wrote:
>> >
>> >
>> > DMARC Folks -
>> >
>> > Now that the DMARC WG has successfully achieved the recent goals
>> (yay!)… perhaps there’s bandwidth to take on the small task of helping to
>> finally close out some prior work that was left aside.
>> >
>> > Specifically, I’m hoping that we can officially close the Authenticated
>> Received Chain (ARC) experiment.  As folks remember, we called the DMARC
>> intermediary breakage problem out of scope in order to publish RFC7489…
>> moving the work of addressing the issue into what became the experimental
>> ARC RFC (RFC8617).
>> >
>> > Now that the experiment has essentially been running since the initial
>> draft in 2015, through a dozen or so revisions, resulting in the
>> Experimental RFC being issued in 2019… we have over a decade of operational
>> experience with it.  During that time, we’ve collectively learned a lot
>> about what has worked, what hasn’t, and how we can fold our collective
>> experience into an effective, scalable mitigation against intermediary
>> DMARC breakage.
>> >
>> > A handful of folks have collaborated on a draft that effectively calls
>> for declaring the ARC experiment complete, with a suggestion for moving
>> further development of what was learned into the DKIM WG where we’re
>> incorporating a similar (and enhanced) signed chaining model.
>> >
>> > Concluding the ARC Experiment
>> > (draft-adams-arc-experiment-conclusion-01)
>> > https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-adams-arc-experiment-conclusion/
>> >
>> > While discussing the proposal, we wondered what path would be the most
>> reasonable to follow for moving the work forward… and the rough consensus
>> (so far) was to first bring it to the DMARC WG as this was where the ARC
>> work began.  So… the question for the folks here is… would you be
>> interested in a very tightly-scoped rechartering of the DMARC WG to
>> expressly take on the activity (and only this activity) of considering,
>> amending, and potentially approving the “Concluding the ARC Experiment”
>> draft so that we can officially move forward?
>> >
>> > To help prime the pump for consideration of rechartering, we’ve drafted
>> a (very) short draft of a proposed DMARC WG charter for this specific work:
>> >
>> > https://github.com/ietf-artarea/charters/blob/main/dmarc/charter.md
>> >
>> > Please give both drafts a read and see if you think that this group
>> would be the right place to spin up this work, and please reply with your
>> thoughts.  The current DMARC WG Chairs (Barry Leiba, Seth Blank) as well as
>> the AD (Andy Newton) will be gathering a sense of the room to determine
>> consensus for moving forward.
>> >
>> > NOTE: We’re not asking for your opinion about the work itself at this
>> time (good / bad / how to improve it)… but rather, would this group be
>> interested in having those discussions here… once we know where to have the
>> discussion… then the floodgates will open (and I’ll be sure to batten down
>> the hatches).
>> >
>> > Thanks for your consideration!
>> >
>> > Cheers,
>> > Trent
>> >
>> > --
>> >
>> > J. Trent Adams
>> >
>> > Director, Ecosystem Security
>> >
>> > Proofpoint
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > [e-mail]
>> >
>> > https://www.linkedin.com/in/jtrentadams
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > dmarc mailing list -- [e-mail]
>> > To unsubscribe send an email to [e-mail]
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> dmarc mailing list -- [e-mail]
>> To unsubscribe send an email to [e-mail]
>>
> _______________________________________________
> dmarc mailing list -- [e-mail]
> To unsubscribe send an email to [e-mail]
>