Re: [bitcoin-dev] Proposal for a few IANA mime-types related to Bitcoin

From: "Peter D. Gray" <peter@coinkite•com>
To: Christopher Allen <ChristopherA@lifewithalacrity•com>
Cc: Bitcoin Protocol Discussion
	<bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org>,
	Wolf McNally <wolf@wolfmcnally•com>,
	Shannon Appelcline <shannon.appelcline@gmail•com>
Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] Proposal for a few IANA mime-types related to Bitcoin
Date: Tue, 31 Aug 2021 15:18:00 -0400	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20210831191800.GW91472@coinkite.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CACrqygDZGWxrv+3w=gmwVRO4iTLYJnn8QLBEwNQ_EdkXNr46Ww@mail.gmail.com>

QR Codes do not use IANA mime-types.

If anyone wanted to use UR encoding for PSBT data in a web context (http),
NFC, or email, it would probably be best to discourage them.

While I can understand the need for UR encoding in animated QR
codes, I don't think any other use-case could justify introducing
a new word list (ByteWords), a unique checksum algo (Xoshiro256),
fountain codes (Luby Transform) and CBOR... just to wrap a few k
of binary.

I do love CBOR though. It's the best.

---
@DocHEX  ||  Coinkite  ||  PGP: A3A31BAD 5A2A5B10

On Tue, Aug 31, 2021 at 12:01:23PM -0700, Christopher Allen wrote:
> Note that a number of wallet companies are now supporting the UR encoded
> version of PSBTs, allowing for better QR & Airgap solutions, and also
> leverage CBOR which is an IETF standard.
> 
> We have a community of Airgap wallet developers at
> https://github.com/BlockchainCommons/Airgapped-Wallet-Community
> 
> …and libraries at
> https://github.com/BlockchainCommons/crypto-commons#urs
> 
> We’d love for you to register UR as well, maybe as bitcoin/psbt+ur
> 
> Can you bring this up in our community for further discussion?
> https://github.com/BlockchainCommons/Airgapped-Wallet-Community/discussions
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> — Christopher Allen [via iPhone]
> 
> On Tue, Aug 31, 2021 at 11:41 AM Peter D. Gray via bitcoin-dev <
> bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
> 
> > Hi list!
> >
> > I am proposing to register the following MIME (RFC 2046) media types with
> > the IANA:
> >
> >
> > bitcoin/psbt
> >
> >     - aka. a BIP-174 file, in binary
> >     - does not make any claims about signed/unsigned status; lets leave
> > that to the file
> >
> > bitcoin/txn
> >
> >     - aka. wire-ready fully-signed transaction in binary
> >
> > bitcoin/uri
> >
> >     - aka [BIP-21](
> > https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0021.mediawiki)
> >     - could be just a bare bech32 or base58 payment address
> >     - but can also encode amount, comments in URL args
> >     - potentially interesting as a response to 402 - Payment required
> >
> >
> > Other thoughts
> >
> > - some mime-types are proposed in BIP-71 but those are unrelated to above,
> > and never
> >   seem to have been registered
> >
> > - for those who like to encode their binary as base64 or hex, that can be
> > indicated
> >   as "encoding=hex" or "encoding=base64" in the optional parameters, just
> > like
> >   "text/plain; encoding=utf-8" does. However, the default must be binary.
> >
> > - although the above are useful for web servers, they are also useful
> > elsewhere and I
> >   intend to use them in NFC (NDEF records) where a shorter length is
> > critical.
> >
> > - I have no idea how easily IANA will accept these proposals.
> >
> > - current approved mime types:
> > https://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/media-types.xhtml
> >
> > Thoughts?
> >
> > ---
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> >
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> >