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jettbrains / L W3C Strategic Highlights September 2019 This report was prepared for the September 2019 W3C Advisory Committee Meeting (W3C Member link). See the accompanying W3C Fact Sheet — September 2019. For the previous edition, see the April 2019 W3C Strategic Highlights. For future editions of this report, please consult the latest version. A Chinese translation is available. ☰ Contents Introduction Future Web Standards Meeting Industry Needs Web Payments Digital Publishing Media and Entertainment Web & Telecommunications Real-Time Communications (WebRTC) Web & Networks Automotive Web of Things Strengthening the Core of the Web HTML CSS Fonts SVG Audio Performance Web Performance WebAssembly Testing Browser Testing and Tools WebPlatform Tests Web of Data Web for All Security, Privacy, Identity Internationalization (i18n) Web Accessibility Outreach to the world W3C Developer Relations W3C Training Translations W3C Liaisons Introduction This report highlights recent work of enhancement of the existing landscape of the Web platform and innovation for the growth and strength of the Web. 33 working groups and a dozen interest groups enable W3C to pursue its mission through the creation of Web standards, guidelines, and supporting materials. We track the tremendous work done across the Consortium through homogeneous work-spaces in Github which enables better monitoring and management. We are in the middle of a period where we are chartering numerous working groups which demonstrate the rapid degree of change for the Web platform: After 4 years, we are nearly ready to publish a Payment Request API Proposed Recommendation and we need to soon charter follow-on work. In the last year we chartered the Web Payment Security Interest Group. In the last year we chartered the Web Media Working Group with 7 specifications for next generation Media support on the Web. We have Accessibility Guidelines under W3C Member review which includes Silver, a new approach. We have just launched the Decentralized Identifier Working Group which has tremendous potential because Decentralized Identifier (DID) is an identifier that is globally unique, resolveable with high availability, and cryptographically verifiable. We have Privacy IG (PING) under W3C Member review which strengthens our focus on the tradeoff between privacy and function. We have a new CSS charter under W3C Member review which maps the group's work for the next three years. In this period, W3C and the WHATWG have succesfully completed the negotiation of a Memorandum of Understanding rooted in the mutual belief that that having two distinct specifications claiming to be normative is generally harmful for the Web community. The MOU, signed last May, describes how the two organizations are to collaborate on the development of a single authoritative version of the HTML and DOM specifications. W3C subsequently rechartered the HTML Working Group to assist the W3C community in raising issues and proposing solutions for the HTML and DOM specifications, and for the production of W3C Recommendations from WHATWG Review Drafts. As the Web evolves continuously, some groups are looking for ways for specifications to do so as well. So-called "evergreen recommendations" or "living standards" aim to track continuous development (and maintenance) of features, on a feature-by-feature basis, while getting review and patent commitments. We see the maturation and further development of an incredible number of new technologies coming to the Web. Continued progress in many areas demonstrates the vitality of the W3C and the Web community, as the rest of the report illustrates. Future Web Standards W3C has a variety of mechanisms for listening to what the community thinks could become good future Web standards. These include discussions with the Membership, discussions with other standards bodies, the activities of thousands of participants in over 300 community groups, and W3C Workshops. There are lots of good ideas. The W3C strategy team has been identifying promising topics and invites public participation. Future, recent and under consideration Workshops include: Inclusive XR (5-6 November 2019, Seattle, WA, USA) to explore existing and future approaches on making Virtual and Augmented Reality experiences more inclusive, including to people with disabilities; W3C Workshop on Data Models for Transportation (12-13 September 2019, Palo Alto, CA, USA) W3C Workshop on Web Games (27-28 June 2019, Redmond, WA, USA), view report Second W3C Workshop on the Web of Things (3-5 June 2019, Munich, Germany) W3C Workshop on Web Standardization for Graph Data; Creating Bridges: RDF, Property Graph and SQL (4-6 March 2019, Berlin, Germany), view report Web & Machine Learning. The Strategy Funnel documents the staff's exploration of potential new work at various phases: Exploration and Investigation, Incubation and Evaluation, and eventually to the chartering of a new standards group. The Funnel view is a GitHub Project where new area are issues represented by “cards” which move through the columns, usually from left to right. Most cards start in Exploration and move towards Chartering, or move out of the funnel. Public input is welcome at any stage but particularly once Incubation has begun. This helps W3C identify work that is sufficiently incubated to warrant standardization, to review the ecosystem around the work and indicate interest in participating in its standardization, and then to draft a charter that reflects an appropriate scope. Ongoing feedback can speed up the overall standardization process. Since the previous highlights document, W3C has chartered a number of groups, and started discussion on many more: Newly Chartered or Rechartered Web Application Security WG (03-Apr) Web Payment Security IG (17-Apr) Patent and Standards IG (24-Apr) Web Applications WG (14-May) Web & Networks IG (16-May) Media WG (23-May) Media and Entertainment IG (06-Jun) HTML WG (06-Jun) Decentralized Identifier WG (05-Sep) Extended Privacy IG (PING) (30-Sep) Verifiable Claims WG (30-Sep) Service Workers WG (31-Dec) Dataset Exchange WG (31-Dec) Web of Things Working Group (31-Dec) Web Audio Working Group (31-Dec) Proposed charters / Advance Notice Accessibility Guidelines WG Privacy IG (PING) RDF Literal Direction WG Timed Text WG CSS WG Web Authentication WG Closed Internationalization Tag Set IG Meeting Industry Needs Web Payments All Web Payments specifications W3C's payments standards enable a streamlined checkout experience, enabling a consistent user experience across the Web with lower front end development costs for merchants. Users can store and reuse information and more quickly and accurately complete online transactions. The Web Payments Working Group has republished Payment Request API as a Candidate Recommendation, aiming to publish a Proposed Recommendation in the Fall 2019, and is discussing use cases and features for Payment Request after publication of the 1.0 Recommendation. Browser vendors have been finalizing implementation of features added in the past year (view the implementation report). As work continues on the Payment Handler API and its implementation (currently in Chrome and Edge Canary), one focus in 2019 is to increase adoption in other browsers. Recently, Mastercard demonstrated the use of Payment Request API to carry out EMVCo's Secure Remote Commerce (SRC) protocol whose payment method definition is being developed with active participation by Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and Discover. Payment method availability is a key factor in merchant considerations about adopting Payment Request API. The ability to get uniform adoption of a new payment method such as Secure Remote Commerce (SRC) also depends on the availability of the Payment Handler API in browsers, or of proprietary alternatives. Web Monetization, which the Web Payments Working Group will discuss again at its face-to-face meeting in September, can be used to enable micropayments as an alternative revenue stream to advertising. Since the beginning of 2019, Amazon, Brave Software, JCB, Certus Cybersecurity Solutions and Netflix have joined the Web Payments Working Group. In April, W3C launched the Web Payment Security Group to enable W3C, EMVCo, and the FIDO Alliance to collaborate on a vision for Web payment security and interoperability. Participants will define areas of collaboration and identify gaps between existing technical specifications in order to increase compatibility among different technologies, such as: How do SRC, FIDO, and Payment Request relate? The Payment Services Directive 2 (PSD2) regulations in Europe are scheduled to take effect in September 2019. What is the role of EMVCo, W3C, and FIDO technologies, and what is the current state of readiness for the deadline? How can we improve privacy on the Web at the same time as we meet industry requirements regarding user identity? Digital Publishing All Digital Publishing specifications, Publication milestones The Web is the universal publishing platform. Publishing is increasingly impacted by the Web, and the Web increasingly impacts Publishing. Topic of particular interest to Publishing@W3C include typography and layout, accessibility, usability, portability, distribution, archiving, offline access, print on demand, and reliable cross referencing. And the diverse publishing community represented in the groups consist of the traditional "trade" publishers, ebook reading system manufacturers, but also publishers of audio book, scholarly journals or educational materials, library scientists or browser developers. The Publishing Working Group currently concentrates on Audiobooks which lack a comprehensive standard, thus incurring extra costs and time to publish in this booming market. Active development is ongoing on the future standard: Publication Manifest Audiobook profile for Web Publications Lightweight Packaging Format The BD Comics Manga Community Group, the Synchronized Multimedia for Publications Community Group, the Publishing Community Group and a future group on archival, are companions to the working group where specific work is developed and incubated. The Publishing Community Group is a recently launched incubation channel for Publishing@W3C. The goal of the group is to propose, document, and prototype features broadly related to: publications on the Web reading modes and systems and the user experience of publications The EPUB 3 Community Group has successfully completed the revision of EPUB 3.2. The Publishing Business Group fosters ongoing participation by members of the publishing industry and the overall ecosystem in the development of Web infrastructure to better support the needs of the industry. The Business Group serves as an additional conduit to the Publishing Working Group and several Community Groups for feedback between the publishing ecosystem and W3C. The Publishing BG has played a vital role in fostering and advancing the adoption and continued development of EPUB 3. In particular the BG provided critical support to the update of EPUBCheck to validate EPUB content to the new EPUB 3.2 specification. This resulted in the development, in conjunction with the EPUB3 Community Group, of a new generation of EPUBCheck, i.e., EPUBCheck 4.2 production-ready release. Media and Entertainment All Media specifications The Media and Entertainment vertical tracks media-related topics and features that create immersive experiences for end users. HTML5 brought standard audio and video elements to the Web. Standardization activities since then have aimed at turning the Web into a professional platform fully suitable for the delivery of media content and associated materials, enabling missing features to stream video content on the Web such as adaptive streaming and content protection. Together with Microsoft, Comcast, Netflix and Google, W3C received an Technology & Engineering Emmy Award in April 2019 for standardization of a full TV experience on the Web. Current goals are to: Reinforce core media technologies: Creation of the Media Working Group, to develop media-related specifications incubated in the WICG (e.g. Media Capabilities, Picture-in-picture, Media Session) and maintain maintain/evolve Media Source Extensions (MSE) and Encrypted Media Extensions (EME). Improve support for Media Timed Events: data cues incubation. Enhance color support (HDR, wide gamut), in scope of the CSS WG and in the Color on the Web CG. Reduce fragmentation: Continue annual releases of a common and testable baseline media devices, in scope of the Web Media APIs CG and in collaboration with the CTA WAVE Project. Maintain the Road-map of Media Technologies for the Web which highlights Web technologies that can be used to build media applications and services, as well as known gaps to enable additional use cases. Create the future: Discuss perspectives for Media and Entertainment for the Web. Bring the power of GPUs to the Web (graphics, machine learning, heavy processing), under incubation in the GPU for the Web CG. Transition to a Working Group is under discussion. Determine next steps after the successful W3C Workshop on Web Games of June 2019. View the report. Timed Text The Timed Text Working Group develops and maintains formats used for the representation of text synchronized with other timed media, like audio and video, and notably works on TTML, profiles of TTML, and WebVTT. Recent progress includes: A robust WebVTT implementation report poises the specification for publication as a proposed recommendation. Discussions around re-chartering, notably to add a TTML Profile for Audio Description deliverable to the scope of the group, and clarify that rendering of captions within XR content is also in scope. Immersive Web Hardware that enables Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) applications are now broadly available to consumers, offering an immersive computing platform with both new opportunities and challenges. The ability to interact directly with immersive hardware is critical to ensuring that the web is well equipped to operate as a first-class citizen in this environment. The Immersive Web Working Group has been stabilizing the WebXR Device API while the companion Immersive Web Community Group incubates the next series of features identified as key for the future of the Immersive Web. W3C plans a workshop focused on the needs and benefits at the intersection of VR & Accessibility (Inclusive XR), on 5-6 November 2019 in Seattle, WA, USA, to explore existing and future approaches on making Virtual and Augmented Reality experiences more inclusive. Web & Telecommunications The Web is the Open Platform for Mobile. Telecommunication service providers and network equipment providers have long been critical actors in the deployment of Web technologies. As the Web platform matures, it brings richer and richer capabilities to extend existing services to new users and devices, and propose new and innovative services. Real-Time Communications (WebRTC) All Real-Time Communications specifications WebRTC has reshaped the whole communication landscape by making any connected device a potential communication end-point, bringing audio and video communications anywhere, on any network, vastly expanding the ability of operators to reach their customers. WebRTC serves as the corner-stone of many online communication and collaboration services. The WebRTC Working Group aims to bringing WebRTC 1.0 (and companion specification Media Capture and Streams) to Recommendation by the end of 2019. Intense efforts are focused on testing (supported by a dedicated hackathon at IETF 104) and interoperability. The group is considering pushing features that have not gotten enough traction to separate modules or to a later minor revision of the spec. Beyond WebRTC 1.0, the WebRTC Working Group will focus its efforts on WebRTC NV which the group has started documenting by identifying use cases. Web & Networks Recently launched, in the wake of the May 2018 Web5G workshop, the Web & Networks Interest Group is chaired by representatives from AT&T, China Mobile and Intel, with a goal to explore solutions for web applications to achieve better performance and resource allocation, both on the device and network. The group's first efforts are around use cases, privacy & security requirements and liaisons. Automotive All Automotive specifications To create a rich application ecosystem for vehicles and other devices allowed to connect to the vehicle, the W3C Automotive Working Group is delivering a service specification to expose all common vehicle signals (engine temperature, fuel/charge level, range, tire pressure, speed, etc.) The Vehicle Information Service Specification (VISS), which is a Candidate Recommendation, is seeing more implementations across the industry. It provides the access method to a common data model for all the vehicle signals –presently encapsulating a thousand or so different data elements– and will be growing to accommodate the advances in automotive such as autonomous and driver assist technologies and electrification. The group is already working on a successor to VISS, leveraging the underlying data model and the VIWI submission from Volkswagen, for a more robust means of accessing vehicle signals information and the same paradigm for other automotive needs including location-based services, media, notifications and caching content. The Automotive and Web Platform Business Group acts as an incubator for prospective standards work. One of its task forces is using W3C VISS in performing data sampling and off-boarding the information to the cloud. Access to the wealth of information that W3C's auto signals standard exposes is of interest to regulators, urban planners, insurance companies, auto manufacturers, fleet managers and owners, service providers and others. In addition to components needed for data sampling and edge computing, capturing user and owner consent, information collection methods and handling of data are in scope. The upcoming W3C Workshop on Data Models for Transportation (September 2019) is expected to focus on the need of additional ontologies around transportation space. Web of Things All Web of Things specifications W3C's Web of Things work is designed to bridge disparate technology stacks to allow devices to work together and achieve scale, thus enabling the potential of the Internet of Things by eliminating fragmentation and fostering interoperability. Thing descriptions expressed in JSON-LD cover the behavior, interaction affordances, data schema, security configuration, and protocol bindings. The Web of Things complements existing IoT ecosystems to reduce the cost and risk for suppliers and consumers of applications that create value by combining multiple devices and information services. There are many sectors that will benefit, e.g. smart homes, smart cities, smart industry, smart agriculture, smart healthcare and many more. The Web of Things Working Group is finishing the initial Web of Things standards, with support from the Web of Things Interest Group: Web of Things Architecture Thing Descriptions Strengthening the Core of the Web HTML The HTML Working Group was chartered early June to assist the W3C community in raising issues and proposing solutions for the HTML and DOM specifications, and to produce W3C Recommendations from WHATWG Review Drafts. A few days before, W3C and the WHATWG signed a Memorandum of Understanding outlining the agreement to collaborate on the development of a single version of the HTML and DOM specifications. Issues and proposed solutions for HTML and DOM done via the newly rechartered HTML Working Group in the WHATWG repositories The HTML Working Group is targetting November 2019 to bring HTML and DOM to Candidate Recommendations. CSS All CSS specifications CSS is a critical part of the Open Web Platform. The CSS Working Group gathers requirements from two large groups of CSS users: the publishing industry and application developers. Within W3C, those groups are exemplified by the Publishing groups and the Web Platform Working Group. The former requires things like better pagination support and advanced font handling, the latter needs intelligent (and fast!) scrolling and animations. What we know as CSS is actually a collection of almost a hundred specifications, referred to as ‘modules’. The current state of CSS is defined by a snapshot, updated once a year. The group also publishes an index defining every term defined by CSS specifications. Fonts All Fonts specifications The Web Fonts Working Group develops specifications that allow the interoperable deployment of downloadable fonts on the Web, with a focus on Progressive Font Enrichment as well as maintenance of WOFF Recommendations. Recent and ongoing work includes: Early API experiments by Adobe and Monotype have demonstrated the feasibility of a font enrichment API, where a server delivers a font with minimal glyph repertoire and the client can query the full repertoire and request additional subsets on-the-fly. In other experiments, the Brotli compression used in WOFF 2 was extended to support shared dictionaries and patch update. Metrics to quantify improvement are a current hot discussion topic. The group will meet at ATypi 2019 in Japan, to gather requirements from the international typography community. The group will first produce a report summarizing the strengths and weaknesses of each prototype solution by Q2 2020. SVG All SVG specifications SVG is an important and widely-used part of the Open Web Platform. The SVG Working Group focuses on aligning the SVG 2.0 specification with browser implementations, having split the specification into a currently-implemented 2.0 and a forward-looking 2.1. Current activity is on stabilization, increased integration with the Open Web Platform, and test coverage analysis. The Working Group was rechartered in March 2019. A new work item concerns native (non-Web-browser) uses of SVG as a non-interactive, vector graphics format. Audio The Web Audio Working Group was extended to finish its work on the Web Audio API, expecting to publish it as a Recommendation by year end. The specification enables synthesizing audio in the browser. Audio operations are performed with audio nodes, which are linked together to form a modular audio routing graph. Multiple sources — with different types of channel layout — are supported. This modular design provides the flexibility to create complex audio functions with dynamic effects. The first version of Web Audio API is now feature complete and is implemented in all modern browsers. Work has started on the next version, and new features are being incubated in the Audio Community Group. Performance Web Performance All Web Performance specifications There are currently 18 specifications in development in the Web Performance Working Group aiming to provide methods to observe and improve aspects of application performance of user agent features and APIs. The W3C team is looking at related work incubated in the W3C GPU for the Web (WebGPU) Community Group which is poised to transition to a W3C Working Group. A preliminary draft charter is available. WebAssembly All WebAssembly specifications WebAssembly improves Web performance and power by being a virtual machine and execution environment enabling loaded pages to run native (compiled) code. It is deployed in Firefox, Edge, Safari and Chrome. The specification will soon reach Candidate Recommendation. WebAssembly enables near-native performance, optimized load time, and perhaps most importantly, a compilation target for existing code bases. While it has a small number of native types, much of the performance increase relative to Javascript derives from its use of consistent typing. WebAssembly leverages decades of optimization for compiled languages and the byte code is optimized for compactness and streaming (the web page starts executing while the rest of the code downloads). Network and API access all occurs through accompanying Javascript libraries -- the security model is identical to that of Javascript. Requirements gathering and language development occur in the Community Group while the Working Group manages test development, community review and progression of specifications on the Recommendation Track. Testing Browser testing plays a critical role in the growth of the Web by: Improving the reliability of Web technology definitions; Improving the quality of implementations of these technologies by helping vendors to detect bugs in their products; Improving the data available to Web developers on known bugs and deficiencies of Web technologies by publishing results of these tests. Browser Testing and Tools The Browser Testing and Tools Working Group is developing WebDriver version 2, having published last year the W3C Recommendation of WebDriver. WebDriver acts as a remote control interface that enables introspection and control of user agents, provides a platform- and language-neutral wire protocol as a way for out-of-process programs to remotely instruct the behavior of Web, and emulates the actions of a real person using the browser. WebPlatform Tests The WebPlatform Tests project now provides a mechanism which allows to fully automate tests that previously needed to be run manually: TestDriver. TestDriver enables sending trusted key and mouse events, sending complex series of trusted pointer and key interactions for things like in-content drag-and-drop or pinch zoom, and even file upload. Since 2014 W3C began work on this coordinated open-source effort to build a cross-browser test suite for the Web Platform, which WHATWG, and all major browsers adopted. Web of Data All Data specifications There have been several great success stories around the standardization of data on the web over the past year. Verifiable Claims seems to have significant uptake. It is also significant that the Distributed Identifier WG charter has received numerous favorable reviews, and was just recently launched. JSON-LD has been a major success with the large deployment on Web sites via schema.org. JSON-LD 1.1 completed technical work, about to transition to CR More than 25% of websites today include schema.org data in JSON-LD The Web of Things description is in CR since May, making use of JSON-LD Verifiable Credentials data model is in CR since July, also making use of JSON-LD Continued strong interest in decentralized identifiers Engagement from the TAG with reframing core documents, such as Ethical Web Principles, to include data on the web within their scope Data is increasingly important for all organizations, especially with the rise of IoT and Big Data. W3C has a mature and extensive suite of standards relating to data that were developed over two decades of experience, with plans for further work on making it easier for developers to work with graph data and knowledge graphs. Linked Data is about the use of URIs as names for things, the ability to dereference these URIs to get further information and to include links to other data. There are ever-increasing sources of open Linked Data on the Web, as well as data services that are restricted to the suppliers and consumers of those services. The digital transformation of industry is seeking to exploit advanced digital technologies. This will facilitate businesses to integrate horizontally along the supply and value chains, and vertically from the factory floor to the office floor. W3C is seeking to make it easier to support enterprise-wide data management and governance, reflecting the strategic importance of data to modern businesses. Traditional approaches to data have focused on tabular databases (SQL/RDBMS), Comma Separated Value (CSV) files, and data embedded in PDF documents and spreadsheets. We're now in midst of a major shift to graph data with nodes and labeled directed links between them. Graph data is: Faster than using SQL and associated JOIN operations More favorable to integrating data from heterogeneous sources Better suited to situations where the data model is evolving In the wake of the recent W3C Workshop on Graph Data we are in the process of launching a Graph Standardization Business Group to provide a business perspective with use cases and requirements, to coordinate technical standards work and liaisons with external organizations. Web for All Security, Privacy, Identity All Security specifications, all Privacy specifications Authentication on the Web As the WebAuthn Level 1 W3C Recommendation published last March is seeing wide implementation and adoption of strong cryptographic authentication, work is proceeding on Level 2. The open standard Web API gives native authentication technology built into native platforms, browsers, operating systems (including mobile) and hardware, offering protection against hacking, credential theft, phishing attacks, thus aiming to end the era of passwords as a security construct. You may read more in our March press release. Privacy An increasing number of W3C specifications are benefitting from Privacy and Security review; there are security and privacy aspects to every specification. Early review is essential. Working with the TAG, the Privacy Interest Group has updated the Self-Review Questionnaire: Security and Privacy. Other recent work of the group includes public blogging further to the exploration of anti-patterns in standards and permission prompts. Security The Web Application Security Working Group adopted Feature Policy, aiming to allow developers to selectively enable, disable, or modify the behavior of some of these browser features and APIs within their application; and Fetch Metadata, aiming to provide servers with enough information to make a priori decisions about whether or not to service a request based on the way it was made, and the context in which it will be used. The Web Payment Security Interest Group, launched last April, convenes members from W3C, EMVCo, and the FIDO Alliance to discuss cooperative work to enhance the security and interoperability of Web payments (read more about payments). Internationalization (i18n) All Internationalization specifications, educational articles related to Internationalization, spec developers checklist Only a quarter or so current Web users use English online and that proportion will continue to decrease as the Web reaches more and more communities of limited English proficiency. If the Web is to live up to the "World Wide" portion of its name, and for the Web to truly work for stakeholders all around the world engaging with content in various languages, it must support the needs of worldwide users as they engage with content in the various languages. The growth of epublishing also brings requirements for new features and improved typography on the Web. It is important to ensure the needs of local communities are captured. The W3C Internationalization Initiative was set up to increase in-house resources dedicated to accelerating progress in making the World Wide Web "worldwide" by gathering user requirements, supporting developers, and education & outreach. For an overview of current projects see the i18n radar. W3C's Internationalization efforts progressed on a number of fronts recently: Requirements: New African and European language groups will work on the gap analysis, errata and layout requirements. Gap analysis: Japanese, Devanagari, Bengali, Tamil, Lao, Khmer, Javanese, and Ethiopic updated in the gap-analysis documents. Layout requirements document: notable progress tracked in the Southeast Asian Task Force while work continues on Chinese layout requirements. Developer support: Spec reviews: the i18n WG continues active review of specifications of the WHATWG and other W3C Working Groups. Short review checklist: easy way to begin a self-review to help spec developers understand what aspects of their spec are likely to need attention for internationalization, and points them to more detailed checklists for the relevant topics. It also helps those reviewing specs for i18n issues. Strings on the Web: Language and Direction Metadata lays out issues and discusses potential solutions for passing information about language and direction with strings in JSON or other data formats. The document was rewritten for clarity, and expanded. The group is collaborating with the JSON-LD and Web Publishing groups to develop a plan for updating RDF, JSON-LD and related specifications to handle metadata for base direction of text (bidi). User-friendly test format: a new format was developed for Internationalization Test Suite tests, which displays helpful information about how the test works. This particularly useful because those tests are pointed to by educational materials and gap-analysis documents. Web Platform Tests: a large number of tests in the i18n test suite have been ported to the WPT repository, including: css-counter-styles, css-ruby, css-syntax, css-test, css-text-decor, css-writing-modes, and css-pseudo. Education & outreach: (for all educational materials, see the HTML & CSS Authoring Techniques) Web Accessibility All Accessibility specifications, WAI resources The Web Accessibility Initiative supports W3C's Web for All mission. Recent achievements include: Education and training: Inaccessibility of CAPTCHA updated to bring our analysis and recommendations up to date with CAPTCHA practice today, concluding two years of extensive work and invaluable input from the public (read more on the W3C Blog Learn why your web content and applications should be accessible. The Education and Outreach Working Group has completed revision and updating of the Business Case for Digital Accessibility. Accessibility guidelines: The Accessibility Guidelines Working Group has continued to update WCAG Techniques and Understanding WCAG 2.1; and published a Candidate Recommendation of Accessibility Conformance Testing Rules Format 1.0 to improve inter-rater reliability when evaluating conformance of web content to WCAG An updated charter is being developed to host work on "Silver", the next generation accessibility guidelines (WCAG 2.2) There are accessibility aspects to most specifications. Check your work with the FAST checklist. Outreach to the world W3C Developer Relations To foster the excellent feedback loop between Web Standards development and Web developers, and to grow participation from that diverse community, recent W3C Developer Relations activities include: @w3cdevs tracks the enormous amount of work happening across W3C W3C Track during the Web Conference 2019 in San Francisco Tech videos: W3C published the 2019 Web Games Workshop videos The 16 September 2019 Developer Meetup in Fukuoka, Japan, is open to all and will combine a set of technical demos prepared by W3C groups, and a series of talks on a selected set of W3C technologies and projects W3C is involved with Mozilla, Google, Samsung, Microsoft and Bocoup in the organization of ViewSource 2019 in Amsterdam (read more on the W3C Blog) W3C Training In partnership with EdX, W3C's MOOC training program, W3Cx offers a complete "Front-End Web Developer" (FEWD) professional certificate program that consists of a suite of five courses on the foundational languages that power the Web: HTML5, CSS and JavaScript. We count nearly 900K students from all over the world. Translations Many Web users rely on translations of documents developed at W3C whose official language is English. W3C is extremely grateful to the continuous efforts of its community in ensuring our various deliverables in general, and in our specifications in particular, are made available in other languages, for free, ensuring their exposure to a much more diverse set of readers. Last Spring we developed a more robust system, a new listing of translations of W3C specifications and updated the instructions on how to contribute to our translation efforts. W3C Liaisons Liaisons and coordination with numerous organizations and Standards Development Organizations (SDOs) is crucial for W3C to: make sure standards are interoperable coordinate our respective agenda in Internet governance: W3C participates in ICANN, GIPO, IGF, the I* organizations (ICANN, IETF, ISOC, IAB). ensure at the government liaison level that our standards work is officially recognized when important to our membership so that products based on them (often done by our members) are part of procurement orders. W3C has ARO/PAS status with ISO. W3C participates in the EU MSP and Rolling Plan on Standardization ensure the global set of Web and Internet standards form a compatible stack of technologies, at the technical and policy level (patent regime, fragmentation, use in policy making) promote Standards adoption equally by the industry, the public sector, and the public at large Coralie Mercier, Editor, W3C Marketing & Communications $Id: Overview.html,v 1.60 2019/10/15 12:05:52 coralie Exp $ Copyright © 2019 W3C ® (MIT, ERCIM, Keio, Beihang) Usage policies apply.
credebl / PlatformOpen source, Open standards based Decentralised Identity & Verifiable Credentials Platform
Mdshobu / Liberty House Club Whitepaper# Liberty House Club **A Parallel Binance Chain to Enable Smart Contracts** _NOTE: This document is under development. Please check regularly for updates!_ ## Table of Contents - [Motivation](#motivation) - [Design Principles](#design-principles) - [Consensus and Validator Quorum](#consensus-and-validator-quorum) * [Proof of Staked Authority](#proof-of-staked-authority) * [Validator Quorum](#validator-quorum) * [Security and Finality](#security-and-finality) * [Reward](#reward) - [Token Economy](#token-economy) * [Native Token](#native-token) * [Other Tokens](#other-tokens) - [Cross-Chain Transfer and Communication](#cross-chain-transfer-and-communication) * [Cross-Chain Transfer](#cross-chain-transfer) * [BC to BSC Architecture](#bc-to-bsc-architecture) * [BSC to BC Architecture](#bsc-to-bc-architecture) * [Timeout and Error Handling](#timeout-and-error-handling) * [Cross-Chain User Experience](#cross-chain-user-experience) * [Cross-Chain Contract Event](#cross-chain-contract-event) - [Staking and Governance](#staking-and-governance) * [Staking on BC](#staking-on-bc) * [Rewarding](#rewarding) * [Slashing](#slashing) - [Relayers](#relayers) * [BSC Relayers](#bsc-relayers) * [Oracle Relayers](#oracle-relayers) - [Outlook](#outlook) # Motivation After its mainnet community [launch](https://www.binance.com/en/blog/327334696200323072/Binance-DEX-Launches-on-Binance-Chain-Invites-Further-Community-Development) in April 2019, [Binance Chain](https://www.binance.org) has exhibited its high speed and large throughput design. Binance Chain’s primary focus, its native [decentralized application](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decentralized_application) (“dApp”) [Binance DEX](https://www.binance.org/trade), has demonstrated its low-latency matching with large capacity headroom by handling millions of trading volume in a short time. Flexibility and usability are often in an inverse relationship with performance. The concentration on providing a convenient digital asset issuing and trading venue also brings limitations. Binance Chain's most requested feature is the programmable extendibility, or simply the [Smart Contract](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_contract) and Virtual Machine functions. Digital asset issuers and owners struggle to add new decentralized features for their assets or introduce any sort of community governance and activities. Despite this high demand for adding the Smart Contract feature onto Binance Chain, it is a hard decision to make. The execution of a Smart Contract may slow down the exchange function and add non-deterministic factors to trading. If that compromise could be tolerated, it might be a straightforward idea to introduce a new Virtual Machine specification based on [Tendermint](https://tendermint.com/core/), based on the current underlying consensus protocol and major [RPC](https://docs.binance.org/api-reference/node-rpc.html) implementation of Binance Chain. But all these will increase the learning requirements for all existing dApp communities, and will not be very welcomed. We propose a parallel blockchain of the current Binance Chain to retain the high performance of the native DEX blockchain and to support a friendly Smart Contract function at the same time. # Design Principles After the creation of the parallel blockchain into the Binance Chain ecosystem, two blockchains will run side by side to provide different services. The new parallel chain will be called “**Binance Smart Chain**” (short as “**BSC**” for the below sections), while the existing mainnet remains named “**Binance Chain**” (short as “**BC**” for the below sections). Here are the design principles of **BSC**: 1. **Standalone Blockchain**: technically, BSC is a standalone blockchain, instead of a layer-2 solution. Most BSC fundamental technical and business functions should be self-contained so that it can run well even if the BC stopped for a short period. 2. **Ethereum Compatibility**: The first practical and widely-used Smart Contract platform is Ethereum. To take advantage of the relatively mature applications and community, BSC chooses to be compatible with the existing Ethereum mainnet. This means most of the **dApps**, ecosystem components, and toolings will work with BSC and require zero or minimum changes; BSC node will require similar (or a bit higher) hardware specification and skills to run and operate. The implementation should leave room for BSC to catch up with further Ethereum upgrades. 3. **Staking Involved Consensus and Governance**: Staking-based consensus is more environmentally friendly and leaves more flexible option to the community governance. Expectedly, this consensus should enable better network performance over [proof-of-work](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_of_work) blockchain system, i.e., faster blocking time and higher transaction capacity. 4. **Native Cross-Chain Communication**: both BC and BSC will be implemented with native support for cross-chain communication among the two blockchains. The communication protocol should be bi-directional, decentralized, and trustless. It will concentrate on moving digital assets between BC and BSC, i.e., [BEP2](https://github.com/binance-chain/BEPs/blob/master/BEP2.md) tokens, and eventually, other BEP tokens introduced later. The protocol should care for the minimum of other items stored in the state of the blockchains, with only a few exceptions. # Consensus and Validator Quorum Based on the above design principles, the consensus protocol of BSC is to fulfill the following goals: 1. Blocking time should be shorter than Ethereum network, e.g. 5 seconds or even shorter. 2. It requires limited time to confirm the finality of transactions, e.g. around 1-min level or shorter. 3. There is no inflation of native token: BNB, the block reward is collected from transaction fees, and it will be paid in BNB. 4. It is compatible with Ethereum system as much as possible. 5. It allows modern [proof-of-stake](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_of_stake) blockchain network governance. ## Proof of Staked Authority Although Proof-of-Work (PoW) has been recognized as a practical mechanism to implement a decentralized network, it is not friendly to the environment and also requires a large size of participants to maintain the security. Ethereum and some other blockchain networks, such as [MATIC Bor](https://github.com/maticnetwork/bor), [TOMOChain](https://tomochain.com/), [GoChain](https://gochain.io/), [xDAI](https://xdai.io/), do use [Proof-of-Authority(PoA)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_of_authority) or its variants in different scenarios, including both testnet and mainnet. PoA provides some defense to 51% attack, with improved efficiency and tolerance to certain levels of Byzantine players (malicious or hacked). It serves as an easy choice to pick as the fundamentals. Meanwhile, the PoA protocol is most criticized for being not as decentralized as PoW, as the validators, i.e. the nodes that take turns to produce blocks, have all the authorities and are prone to corruption and security attacks. Other blockchains, such as EOS and Lisk both, introduce different types of [Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS)](https://en.bitcoinwiki.org/wiki/DPoS) to allow the token holders to vote and elect the validator set. It increases the decentralization and favors community governance. BSC here proposes to combine DPoS and PoA for consensus, so that: 1. Blocks are produced by a limited set of validators 2. Validators take turns to produce blocks in a PoA manner, similar to [Ethereum’s Clique](https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-225) consensus design 3. Validator set are elected in and out based on a staking based governance ## Validator Quorum In the genesis stage, a few trusted nodes will run as the initial Validator Set. After the blocking starts, anyone can compete to join as candidates to elect as a validator. The staking status decides the top 21 most staked nodes to be the next validator set, and such an election will repeat every 24 hours. **BNB** is the token used to stake for BSC. In order to remain as compatible as Ethereum and upgradeable to future consensus protocols to be developed, BSC chooses to rely on the **BC** for staking management (Please refer to the below “[Staking and Governance](#staking-and-governance)” section). There is a **dedicated staking module for BSC on BC**. It will accept BSC staking from BNB holders and calculate the highest staked node set. Upon every UTC midnight, BC will issue a verifiable `ValidatorSetUpdate` cross-chain message to notify BSC to update its validator set. While producing further blocks, the existing BSC validators check whether there is a `ValidatorSetUpdate` message relayed onto BSC periodically. If there is, they will update the validator set after an **epoch period**, i.e. a predefined number of blocking time. For example, if BSC produces a block every 5 seconds, and the epoch period is 240 blocks, then the current validator set will check and update the validator set for the next epoch in 1200 seconds (20 minutes). ## Security and Finality Given there are more than ½\*N+1 validators are honest, PoA based networks usually work securely and properly. However, there are still cases where certain amount Byzantine validators may still manage to attack the network, e.g. through the “[Clone Attack](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1902.10244.pdf)”. To secure as much as BC, BSC users are encouraged to wait until receiving blocks sealed by more than ⅔\*N+1 different validators. In that way, the BSC can be trusted at a similar security level to BC and can tolerate less than ⅓\*N Byzantine validators. With 21 validators, if the block time is 5 seconds, the ⅔\*N+1 different validator seals will need a time period of (⅔\*21+1)*5 = 75 seconds. Any critical applications for BSC may have to wait for ⅔\*N+1 to ensure a relatively secure finality. However, besides such arrangement, BSC does introduce **Slashing** logic to penalize Byzantine validators for **double signing** or **inavailability**, which will be covered in the “Staking and Governance” section later. This Slashing logic will expose the malicious validators in a very short time and make the “Clone Attack” very hard or extremely non-beneficial to execute. With this enhancement, ½\*N+1 or even fewer blocks are enough as confirmation for most transactions. ## Reward All the BSC validators in the current validator set will be rewarded with transaction **fees in BNB**. As BNB is not an inflationary token, there will be no mining rewards as what Bitcoin and Ethereum network generate, and the gas fee is the major reward for validators. As BNB is also utility tokens with other use cases, delegators and validators will still enjoy other benefits of holding BNB. The reward for validators is the fees collected from transactions in each block. Validators can decide how much to give back to the delegators who stake their BNB to them, in order to attract more staking. Every validator will take turns to produce the blocks in the same probability (if they stick to 100% liveness), thus, in the long run, all the stable validators may get a similar size of the reward. Meanwhile, the stakes on each validator may be different, so this brings a counter-intuitive situation that more users trust and delegate to one validator, they potentially get less reward. So rational delegators will tend to delegate to the one with fewer stakes as long as the validator is still trustful (insecure validator may bring slashable risk). In the end, the stakes on all the validators will have less variation. This will actually prevent the stake concentration and “winner wins forever” problem seen on some other networks. Some parts of the gas fee will also be rewarded to relayers for Cross-Chain communication. Please refer to the “[Relayers](#relayers)” section below. # Token Economy BC and BSC share the same token universe for BNB and BEP2 tokens. This defines: 1. The same token can circulate on both networks, and flow between them bi-directionally via a cross-chain communication mechanism. 2. The total circulation of the same token should be managed across the two networks, i.e. the total effective supply of a token should be the sum of the token’s total effective supply on both BSC and BC. 3. The tokens can be initially created on BSC in a similar format as ERC20 token standard, or on BC as a BEP2, then created on the other. There are native ways on both networks to link the two and secure the total supply of the token. ## Native Token BNB will run on BSC in the same way as ETH runs on Ethereum so that it remains as “native token” for both BSC and BC. This means, in addition to BNB is used to pay most of the fees on Binance Chain and Binance DEX, BNB will be also used to: 1. pay “fees“ to deploy smart contracts on BSC 2. stake on selected BSC validators, and get corresponding rewards 3. perform cross-chain operations, such as transfer token assets across BC and BSC ### Seed Fund Certain amounts of BNB will be burnt on BC and minted on BSC during its genesis stage. This amount is called “Seed Fund” to circulate on BSC after the first block, which will be dispatched to the initial BC-to-BSC Relayer(described in later sections) and initial validator set introduced at genesis. These BNBs are used to pay transaction fees in the early stage to transfer more BNB from BC onto BSC via the cross-chain mechanism. The BNB cross-chain transfer is discussed in a later section, but for BC to BSC transfer, it is generally to lock BNB on BC from the source address of the transfer to a system-controlled address and unlock the corresponding amount from special contract to the target address of the transfer on BSC, or reversely, when transferring from BSC to BC, it is to lock BNB from the source address on BSC into a special contract and release locked amount on BC from the system address to the target address. The logic is related to native code on BC and a series of smart contracts on BSC. ## Other Tokens BC supports BEP2 tokens and upcoming [BEP8 tokens](https://github.com/binance-chain/BEPs/pull/69), which are native assets transferrable and tradable (if listed) via fast transactions and sub-second finality. Meanwhile, as BSC is Ethereum compatible, it is natural to support ERC20 tokens on BSC, which here is called “**BEP2E**” (with the real name to be introduced by the future BEPs,it potentially covers BEP8 as well). BEP2E may be “Enhanced” by adding a few more methods to expose more information, such as token denomination, decimal precision definition and the owner address who can decide the Token Binding across the chains. BSC and BC work together to ensure that one token can circulate in both formats with confirmed total supply and be used in different use cases. ### Token Binding BEP2 tokens will be extended to host a new attribute to associate the token with a BSC BEP2E token contract, called “**Binder**”, and this process of association is called “**Token Binding**”. Token Binding can happen at any time after BEP2 and BEP2E are ready. The token owners of either BEP2 or BEP2E don’t need to bother about the Binding, until before they really want to use the tokens on different scenarios. Issuers can either create BEP2 first or BEP2E first, and they can be bound at a later time. Of course, it is encouraged for all the issuers of BEP2 and BEP2E to set the Binding up early after the issuance. A typical procedure to bind the BEP2 and BEP2E will be like the below: 1. Ensure both the BEP2 token and the BEP2E token both exist on each blockchain, with the same total supply. BEP2E should have 3 more methods than typical ERC20 token standard: * symbol(): get token symbol * decimals(): get the number of the token decimal digits * owner(): get **BEP2E contract owner’s address.** This value should be initialized in the BEP2E contract constructor so that the further binding action can verify whether the action is from the BEP2E owner. 2. Decide the initial circulation on both blockchains. Suppose the total supply is *S*, and the expected initial circulating supply on BC is *K*, then the owner should lock S-K tokens to a system controlled address on BC. 3. Equivalently, *K* tokens is locked in the special contract on BSC, which handles major binding functions and is named as **TokenHub**. The issuer of the BEP2E token should lock the *K* amount of that token into TokenHub, resulting in *S-K* tokens to circulate on BSC. Thus the total circulation across 2 blockchains remains as *S*. 4. The issuer of BEP2 token sends the bind transaction on BC. Once the transaction is executed successfully after proper verification: * It transfers *S-K* tokens to a system-controlled address on BC. * A cross-chain bind request package will be created, waiting for Relayers to relay. 5. BSC Relayers will relay the cross-chain bind request package into **TokenHub** on BSC, and the corresponding request and information will be stored into the contract. 6. The contract owner and only the owner can run a special method of TokenHub contract, `ApproveBind`, to verify the binding request to mark it as a success. It will confirm: * the token has not been bound; * the binding is for the proper symbol, with proper total supply and decimal information; * the proper lock are done on both networks; 10. Once the `ApproveBind` method has succeeded, TokenHub will mark the two tokens are bounded and share the same circulation on BSC, and the status will be propagated back to BC. After this final confirmation, the BEP2E contract address and decimals will be written onto the BEP2 token as a new attribute on BC, and the tokens can be transferred across the two blockchains bidirectionally. If the ApproveBind fails, the failure event will also be propagated back to BC to release the locked tokens, and the above steps can be re-tried later. # Cross-Chain Transfer and Communication Cross-chain communication is the key foundation to allow the community to take advantage of the dual chain structure: * users are free to create any tokenization, financial products, and digital assets on BSC or BC as they wish * the items on BSC can be manually and programmingly traded and circulated in a stable, high throughput, lighting fast and friendly environment of BC * users can operate these in one UI and tooling ecosystem. ## Cross-Chain Transfer The cross-chain transfer is the key communication between the two blockchains. Essentially the logic is: 1. the `transfer-out` blockchain will lock the amount from source owner addresses into a system controlled address/contracts; 2. the `transfer-in` blockchain will unlock the amount from the system controlled address/contracts and send it to target addresses. The cross-chain transfer package message should allow the BSC Relayers and BC **Oracle Relayers** to verify: 1. Enough amount of token assets are removed from the source address and locked into a system controlled addresses/contracts on the source blockchain. And this can be confirmed on the target blockchain. 2. Proper amounts of token assets are released from a system controlled addresses/contracts and allocated into target addresses on the target blockchain. If this fails, it can be confirmed on source blockchain, so that the locked token can be released back (may deduct fees). 3. The sum of the total circulation of the token assets across the 2 blockchains are not changed after this transfer action completes, no matter if the transfer succeeds or not.  The architecture of cross-chain communication is as in the above diagram. To accommodate the 2 heteroid systems, communication handling is different in each direction. ## BC to BSC Architecture BC is a Tendermint-based, instant finality blockchain. Validators with at least ⅔\*N+1 of the total voting power will co-sign each block on the chain. So that it is practical to verify the block transactions and even the state value via **Block Header** and **Merkle Proof** verification. This has been researched and implemented as “**Light-Client Protocol**”, which are intensively discussed in [the Ethereum](https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/Light-client-protocol) community, studied and implemented for [Cosmos inter-chain communication](https://github.com/cosmos/ics/blob/a4173c91560567bdb7cc9abee8e61256fc3725e9/spec/ics-007-tendermint-client/README.md). BC-to-BSC communication will be verified in an “**on-chain light client**” implemented via BSC **Smart Contracts** (some of them may be **“pre-compiled”**). After some transactions and state change happen on BC, if a transaction is defined to trigger cross-chain communication,the Cross-chain “**package**” message will be created and **BSC Relayers** will pass and submit them onto BSC as data into the "build-in system contracts". The build-in system contracts will verify the package and execute the transactions if it passes the verification. The verification will be guaranteed with the below design: 1. BC blocking status will be synced to the light client contracts on BSC from time to time, via block header and pre-commits, for the below information: * block and app hash of BC that are signed by validators * current validatorset, and validator set update 2. the key-value from the blockchain state will be verified based on the Merkle Proof and information from above #1. After confirming the key-value is accurate and trustful, the build-in system contracts will execute the actions corresponding to the cross-chain packages. Some examples of such packages that can be created for BC-to-BSC are: 1. Bind: bind the BEP2 tokens and BEP2E 2. Transfer: transfer tokens after binding, this means the circulation will decrease (be locked) from BC and appear in the target address balance on BSC 3. Error Handling: to handle any timeout/failure event for BSC-to-BC communication 4. Validatorset update of BSC To ensure no duplication, proper message sequence and timely timeout, there is a “Channel” concept introduced on BC to manage any types of the communication. For relayers, please also refer to the below “Relayers” section. ## BSC to BC Architecture BSC uses Proof of Staked Authority consensus protocol, which has a chance to fork and requires confirmation of more blocks. One block only has the signature of one validator, so that it is not easy to rely on one block to verify data from BSC. To take full advantage of validator quorum of BC, an idea similar to many [Bridge ](https://github.com/poanetwork/poa-bridge)or Oracle blockchains is adopted: 1. The cross-chain communication requests from BSC will be submitted and executed onto BSC as transactions. The execution of the transanction wil emit `Events`, and such events can be observed and packaged in certain “**Oracle**” onto BC. Instead of Block Headers, Hash and Merkle Proof, this type of “Oracle” package directly contains the cross-chain information for actions, such as sender, receiver and amount for transfer. 2. To ensure the security of the Oracle, the validators of BC will form anothe quorum of “**Oracle Relayers**”. Each validator of the BC should run a **dedicated process** as the Oracle Relayer. These Oracle Relayers will submit and vote for the cross-chain communication package, like Oracle, onto BC, using the same validator keys. Any package signed by more than ⅔\*N+1 Oracle Relayers’ voting power is as secure as any block signed by ⅔\*N+1 of the same quorum of validators’ voting power. By using the same validator quorum, it saves the light client code on BC and continuous block updates onto BC. Such Oracles also have Oracle IDs and types, to ensure sequencing and proper error handling. ## Timeout and Error Handling There are scenarios that the cross-chain communication fails. For example, the relayed package cannot be executed on BSC due to some coding bug in the contracts. **Timeout and error handling logics are** used in such scenarios. For the recognizable user and system errors or any expected exceptions, the two networks should heal themselves. For example, when BC to BSC transfer fails, BSC will issue a failure event and Oracle Relayers will execute a refund on BC; when BSC to BC transfer fails, BC will issue a refund package for Relayer to relay in order to unlock the fund. However, unexpected error or exception may still happen on any step of the cross-chain communication. In such a case, the Relayers and Oracle Relayers will discover that the corresponding cross-chain channel is stuck in a particular sequence. After a Timeout period, the Relayers and Oracle Relayers can request a “SkipSequence” transaction, the stuck sequence will be marked as “Unexecutable”. A corresponding alerts will be raised, and the community has to discuss how to handle this scenario, e.g. payback via the sponsor of the validators, or event clear the fund during next network upgrade. ## Cross-Chain User Experience Ideally, users expect to use two parallel chains in the same way as they use one single chain. It requires more aggregated transaction types to be added onto the cross-chain communication to enable this, which will add great complexity, tight coupling, and maintenance burden. Here BC and BSC only implement the basic operations to enable the value flow in the initial launch and leave most of the user experience work to client side UI, such as wallets. E.g. a great wallet may allow users to sell a token directly from BSC onto BC’s DEX order book, in a secure way. ## Cross-Chain Contract Event Cross-Chain Contract Event (CCCE) is designed to allow a smart contract to trigger cross-chain transactions, directly through the contract code. This becomes possible based on: 1. Standard system contracts can be provided to serve operations callable by general smart contracts; 2. Standard events can be emitted by the standard contracts; 3. Oracle Relayers can capture the standard events, and trigger the corresponding cross-chain operations; 4. Dedicated, code-managed address (account) can be created on BC and accessed by the contracts on the BSC, here it is named as **“Contract Address on BC” (CAoB)**. Several standard operations are implemented: 1. BSC to BC transfer: this is implemented in the same way as normal BSC to BC transfer, by only triggered via standard contract. The fund can be transferred to any addresses on BC, including the corresponding CAoB of the transfer originating contract. 2. Transfer on BC: this is implemented as a special cross-chain transfer, while the real transfer is from **CAoB** to any other address (even another CAoB). 3. BC to BSC transfer: this is implemented as two-pass cross-chain communication. The first is triggered by the BSC contract and propagated onto BC, and then in the second pass, BC will start a normal BC to BSC cross-chain transfer, from **CAoB** to contract address on BSC. A special note should be paid on that the BSC contract only increases balance upon any transfer coming in on the second pass, and the error handling in the second pass is the same as the normal BC to BSC transfer. 4. IOC (Immediate-Or-Cancel) Trade Out: the primary goal of transferring assets to BC is to trade. This event will instruct to trade a certain amount of an asset in CAoB into another asset as much as possible and transfer out all the results, i.e. the left the source and the traded target tokens of the trade, back to BSC. BC will handle such relayed events by sending an “Immediate-Or-Cancel”, i.e. IOC order onto the trading pairs, once the next matching finishes, the result will be relayed back to BSC, which can be in either one or two assets. 5. Auction Trade Out: Such event will instruct BC to send an auction order to trade a certain amount of an asset in **CAoB** into another asset as much as possible and transfer out all the results back to BSC at the end of the auction. Auction function is upcoming on BC. There are some details for the Trade Out: 1. both can have a limit price (absolute or relative) for the trade; 2. the end result will be written as cross-chain packages to relay back to BSC; 3. cross-chain communication fees may be charged from the asset transferred back to BSC; 4. BSC contract maintains a mirror of the balance and outstanding orders on CAoB. No matter what error happens during the Trade Out, the final status will be propagated back to the originating contract and clear its internal state. With the above features, it simply adds the cross-chain transfer and exchange functions with high liquidity onto all the smart contracts on BSC. It will greatly add the application scenarios on Smart Contract and dApps, and make 1 chain +1 chain > 2 chains. # Staking and Governance Proof of Staked Authority brings in decentralization and community involvement. Its core logic can be summarized as the below. You may see similar ideas from other networks, especially Cosmos and EOS. 1. Token holders, including the validators, can put their tokens “**bonded**” into the stake. Token holders can **delegate** their tokens onto any validator or validator candidate, to expect it can become an actual validator, and later they can choose a different validator or candidate to **re-delegate** their tokens<sup>1</sup>. 2. All validator candidates will be ranked by the number of bonded tokens on them, and the top ones will become the real validators. 3. Validators can share (part of) their blocking reward with their delegators. 4. Validators can suffer from “**Slashing**”, a punishment for their bad behaviors, such as double sign and/or instability. 5. There is an “**unbonding period**” for validators and delegators so that the system makes sure the tokens remain bonded when bad behaviors are caught, the responsible will get slashed during this period. ## Staking on BC Ideally, such staking and reward logic should be built into the blockchain, and automatically executed as the blocking happens. Cosmos Hub, who shares the same Tendermint consensus and libraries with Binance Chain, works in this way. BC has been preparing to enable staking logic since the design days. On the other side, as BSC wants to remain compatible with Ethereum as much as possible, it is a great challenge and efforts to implement such logic on it. This is especially true when Ethereum itself may move into a different Proof of Stake consensus protocol in a short (or longer) time. In order to keep the compatibility and reuse the good foundation of BC, the staking logic of BSC is implemented on BC: 1. The staking token is BNB, as it is a native token on both blockchains anyway 2. The staking, i.e. token bond and delegation actions and records for BSC, happens on BC. 3. The BSC validator set is determined by its staking and delegation logic, via a staking module built on BC for BSC, and propagated every day UTC 00:00 from BC to BSC via Cross-Chain communication. 4. The reward distribution happens on BC around every day UTC 00:00. ## Rewarding Both the validator update and reward distribution happen every day around UTC 00:00. This is to save the cost of frequent staking updates and block reward distribution. This cost can be significant, as the blocking reward is collected on BSC and distributed on BC to BSC validators and delegators. (Please note BC blocking fees will remain rewarding to BC validators only.) A deliberate delay is introduced here to make sure the distribution is fair: 1. The blocking reward will not be sent to validator right away, instead, they will be distributed and accumulated on a contract; 2. Upon receiving the validator set update into BSC, it will trigger a few cross-chain transfers to transfer the reward to custody addresses on the corresponding validators. The custody addresses are owned by the system so that the reward cannot be spent until the promised distribution to delegators happens. 3. In order to make the synchronization simpler and allocate time to accommodate slashing, the reward for N day will be only distributed in N+2 days. After the delegators get the reward, the left will be transferred to validators’ own reward addresses. ## Slashing Slashing is part of the on-chain governance, to ensure the malicious or negative behaviors are punished. BSC slash can be submitted by anyone. The transaction submission requires **slash evidence** and cost fees but also brings a larger reward when it is successful. So far there are two slashable cases. ### Double Sign It is quite a serious error and very likely deliberate offense when a validator signs more than one block with the same height and parent block. The reference protocol implementation should already have logic to prevent this, so only the malicious code can trigger this. When Double Sign happens, the validator should be removed from the Validator **Set** right away. Anyone can submit a slash request on BC with the evidence of Double Sign of BSC, which should contain the 2 block headers with the same height and parent block, sealed by the offending validator. Upon receiving the evidence, if the BC verifies it to be valid: 1. The validator will be removed from validator set by an instance BSC validator set update Cross-Chain update; 2. A predefined amount of BNB would be slashed from the **self-delegated** BNB of the validator; Both validator and its delegators will not receive the staking rewards. 3. Part of the slashed BNB will allocate to the submitter’s address, which is a reward and larger than the cost of submitting slash request transaction 4. The rest of the slashed BNB will allocate to the other validators’ custody addresses, and distributed to all delegators in the same way as blocking reward. ### Inavailability The liveness of BSC relies on everyone in the Proof of Staked Authority validator set can produce blocks timely when it is their turn. Validators can miss their turn due to any reason, especially problems in their hardware, software, configuration or network. This instability of the operation will hurt the performance and introduce more indeterministic into the system. There can be an internal smart contract responsible for recording the missed blocking metrics of each validator. Once the metrics are above the predefined threshold, the blocking reward for validator will not be relayed to BC for distribution but shared with other better validators. In such a way, the poorly-operating validator should be gradually voted out of the validator set as their delegators will receive less or none reward. If the metrics remain above another higher level of threshold, the validator will be dropped from the rotation, and this will be propagated back to BC, then a predefined amount of BNB would be slashed from the **self-delegated** BNB of the validator. Both validators and delegators will not receive their staking rewards. ### Governance Parameters There are many system parameters to control the behavior of the BSC, e.g. slash amount, cross-chain transfer fees. All these parameters will be determined by BSC Validator Set together through a proposal-vote process based on their staking. Such the process will be carried on BC, and the new parameter values will be picked up by corresponding system contracts via a cross-chain communication. # Relayers Relayers are responsible to submit Cross-Chain Communication Packages between the two blockchains. Due to the heterogeneous parallel chain structure, two different types of Relayers are created. ## BSC Relayers Relayers for BC to BSC communication referred to as “**BSC Relayers**”, or just simply “Relayers”. Relayer is a standalone process that can be run by anyone, and anywhere, except that Relayers must register themselves onto BSC and deposit a certain refundable amount of BNB. Only relaying requests from the registered Relayers will be accepted by BSC. The package they relay will be verified by the on-chain light client on BSC. The successful relay needs to pass enough verification and costs gas fees on BSC, and thus there should be incentive reward to encourage the community to run Relayers. ### Incentives There are two major communication types: 1. Users triggered Operations, such as `token bind` or `cross chain transfer`. Users must pay additional fee to as relayer reward. The reward will be shared with the relayers who sync the referenced blockchain headers. Besides, the reward won't be paid the relayers' accounts directly. A reward distribution mechanism will be brought in to avoid monopolization. 2. System Synchronization, such as delivering `refund package`(caused by failures of most oracle relayers), special blockchain header synchronization(header contains BC validatorset update), BSC staking package. System reward contract will pay reward to relayers' accounts directly. If some Relayers have faster networks and better hardware, they can monopolize all the package relaying and leave no reward to others. Thus fewer participants will join for relaying, which encourages centralization and harms the efficiency and security of the network. Ideally, due to the decentralization and dynamic re-election of BSC validators, one Relayer can hardly be always the first to relay every message. But in order to avoid the monopolization further, the rewarding economy is also specially designed to minimize such chance: 1. The reward for Relayers will be only distributed in batches, and one batch will cover a number of successful relayed packages. 2. The reward a Relayer can get from a batch distribution is not linearly in proportion to their number of successful relayed packages. Instead, except the first a few relays, the more a Relayer relays during a batch period, the less reward it will collect. ## Oracle Relayers Relayers for BSC to BC communication are using the “Oracle” model, and so-called “**Oracle Relayers**”. Each of the validators must, and only the ones of the validator set, run Oracle Relayers. Each Oracle Relayer watches the blockchain state change. Once it catches Cross-Chain Communication Packages, it will submit to vote for the requests. After Oracle Relayers from ⅔ of the voting power of BC validators vote for the changes, the cross-chain actions will be performed. Oracle Replayers should wait for enough blocks to confirm the finality on BSC before submitting and voting for the cross-chain communication packages onto BC. The cross-chain fees will be distributed to BC validators together with the normal BC blocking rewards. Such oracle type relaying depends on all the validators to support. As all the votes for the cross-chain communication packages are recorded on the blockchain, it is not hard to have a metric system to assess the performance of the Oracle Relayers. The poorest performer may have their rewards clawed back via another Slashing logic introduced in the future. # Outlook It is hard to conclude for Binance Chain, as it has never stopped evolving. The dual-chain strategy is to open the gate for users to take advantage of the fast transferring and trading on one side, and flexible and extendable programming on the other side, but it will be one stop along the development of Binance Chain. Here below are the topics to look into so as to facilitate the community better for more usability and extensibility: 1. Add different digital asset model for different business use cases 2. Enable more data feed, especially DEX market data, to be communicated from Binance DEX to BSC 3. Provide interface and compatibility to integrate with Ethereum, including its further upgrade, and other blockchain 4. Improve client side experience to manage wallets and use blockchain more conveniently ------ [1]: BNB business practitioners may provide other benefits for BNB delegators, as they do now for long term BNB holders.
Oluwakemi2000 / Agentic Cybersecurity ArchitectureA modular, agentic-AI-based adaptive cybersecurity architecture for digital ecosystems. Combines Zero Trust, real-time telemetry, and intelligent threat response. Built for researchers, developers, and AI security enthusiasts.#AI, #Cybersecurity, #AgenticAI, #IoT.
HomeFourtune / Ti ValueTi-Value(TV) commodity traceability system will build a trusted business ecosystem for investors, companies and regulators.Based on Ti-Blockchain, inheriting the core characteristics of blockchain technology, TV system uses the blockchain encryption signature and time dimension, to jointly identify the authenticity of commodity information. It can verify the report, trace the source as well as record evaluation. At the same time, it will build a motivation system through a new generation of encrypted digital blockchain to encourage rights protection, promote integrity, build a social credit system and a healthy market.
