Agenda:

• Report writing
• Identify strengths and weaknesses of traditional and new distributed methods of solving use cases

Attending: Eve, Scott S, Jeff, Matisse, Andrew, Jim H, Domenico, John W

Eve reviewed a graph that Kathleen essayed in private email, with three axes: economic paradigm, (political) governance model, and (openness) community type. (s/oligarchy/oligopoly/)

We're enthusiastic about finding out how technologies would get plotted. We wonder if there are exactly three axes and if they're really orthogonal. Can we start by taking the matrix approach in Kathleen's first email, and "checking off" (as in John W's Stellar matrix example) characteristics/features that each technology has? Since there are so many consensus protocols and they change fast, we want to take a relatively high-level approach for a key sampling of these.

For the Alice Participates in Bob's Research Study use case, what are the strengths and weaknesses of doing things using today's technologies and techniques?

• Registries related to particular diseases, such as cancer – clinicaltrials.gov – centralized control systems record the outcome of studies but don't engage with the patient in any way.
• To add such functionality, you'd have to bolt something on, or develop a linking mechanism in between the two.

How could things be different?

• An information sharing agreement (a la JSON-LD) would point to the study (which has a study number) and to the data needed (or a pointer to it).
• Consent?
• Retrofit?
• Efficiency?
• Accountability?
• Trust mechanism? How do you establish that the next slot in the chain is trustable? To what extent does this involve the "drug of centralization" once again?
• Automatability/dynamism?
• If solved with "just blockchain", has these S&W
• If solved with "smart contracts", has these S&W
• If solved with both...
• If solved with IPFS...

A pattern we're imagining in the report is that many use cases will have similar strength and weakness patterns, and we'll want to discuss those in one big analysis section. Each use case may then have its own small subsection(s) discussing delta as necessary. For example, if we think that "automation vs. manual" is a strength of new tech vs. old tech, and "privacy" is a weakness of new tech vs. old tech, we can say that once in the big analysis section.

We might end up recommending a Work Group that develops an architecture, or set/range of architectures, that targets optimal outcomes among the strengths, and mitigates the risks among the weaknesses.

The ISO now has a blockchain group.

Next time:

• Search for independent and dependent variables among the "tensions", as inspired by Kathleen and John W for the report
• Review use case analysis inputs from John W for the report, if available