[Multiformats] IETF 116 Dispatch Multiformats: Responses to Sean Turner and Richard Barnes

[Manu Sporny <[e-mail]>]

Sean channel'd Richard and asked:
> Multiformats seem to be domain specific, do we need a global registry?

Multiformats use a global registry for all multiformat types today;
that's what's broadly deployed and implemented.

The primary reason for doing so, as far as I understand it, is that
using a global namespace means that you can nest Multiformats inside
one another (e.g., Multibase-encoded MultiX value) without having to
worry about inevitable conflicts between the MultiX values (e.g., you
don't have to worry about Multihash values colliding with the Multikey
values when nested inside of a Multibase value).

While some conflate this desire with the "magic header bytes" in a
file, this does not seem to be the driving purpose of Multiformats.
The driving purpose is to have byte headers for snippets of data
inside of an application-layer data format, not to be the magic bytes
header on a file.

I hope that answers your clarifying question during the IETF 116
Dispatch meeting.

-- manu

-- 
Manu Sporny - https://www.linkedin.com/in/manusporny/
Founder/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
https://www.digitalbazaar.com/