Re: [Multiformats] Multiformats Considered Harmful

[Robin Berjon <[e-mail]>]

Hey all,

just jumping in briefly on behalf of factual and historical accuracy.

On 06/09/2023 16:06, Richard Barnes wrote:
> As I understand it, the reason multiformats exist is basically that the 
> blockchain community failed to organize itself well enough to agree on 
> an encoding, so there was a need to shove multiple encodings into a slot 
> and let the recipient figure it out.  While this seems to be a common 
> pattern in some W3C spaces (e.g., VC, DID), it is a compatibility 
> nightmare, and is not something we should build standards around.  Much 
> like DID, multiformats is a fine hack to multiplex multiple things into 
> a single slot, but one that should at best be documented for historical 
> purposes while we build forward to a common thing, not held out as in 
> any sense a good thing to do.

I'm not sure where the idea that multiformats are a blockchain thing 
came from. Multiformats are a core component of the IPFS and libp2p 
protocol families, neither of which are in any way blockchains.

It may be possible that the IETF isn't the right place to standardise 
widely deployed Internet protocols with multiple interoperable 
implementations or (as is the current topic) their component parts; I 
will defer to the the community on that. However, given how core 
multiformats are to some essential parts of these protocols (e.g., 
CIDs), one way or another they need more than documentation for 
historical purposes.

-- 
Robin Berjon (he/him)
Governance & Standards at Protocol Labs
https://berjon.com/ - https://mastodon.social/@robin