Call Summary
Here is the Work-in-Progress version of the Summary.
All Call participants are invited to extend and correct it!
Participants
There were clearly two groups of people in the call: Solution Developers and Core Developers.
SolutionDevs are using Whisper and Whisper-Clients in their solution for corporate customers.
CoreDevs are developing technology (both protocol an client).
Most of communication in the call was between these two groups.
Chatham House Rules
I would ask all participants to apply Chatham House Rule to all WhiSpeG meetings. This is in respect to all Whisper Devs, who would not like to be exposed in public too much.
Discussed Topics
1. Specification
CoreDevs:
Considering current state of specification as quite solid.
If SolutionDevs need better specs, they should create a PR or an Issues on specs. What is not good enough exactly?
More resources (technnical writers) to improve Specs would be appreciated.
SolutionDevs:
What is the current official specs that being maintained? Unclear.
It would be nice to have a spec of a quality of a good IETF level.
Looks like we are missing single source of true for Whisper spec.
2. Testnet
SolutionDevs:
Is there any testnet? We just don’t know any.
CoreDevs:
There is a testnet. We will publish inode’s addresses.
3. UseCases
CoreDevs:
ask about detailed UseCase descriptions from SolutionDevs. Whisper (like other IM protocol) has different aspects:
- P2P,
- Darkness (conversational and metadata),
- Throughput,
- Reliability.
Which of them are more important for which UseCase?
SolutionDevs:
UseCase descriptions can be provided.
4. Benchmarking and Comparison
CoreDevs:
UseCases provided by SolutionDevs should contains quantitative requirements.
It is hard to solve trade-offs correctly while developing protocols without quantitative requirements to be met.
There is a swarm toolset to benchmark a network. May be it could be applied to Whisper development too.
Different existing IM protocols should be evaluated and compared to each other. It helps to set better development goals.
@Ethernian:
Comparison and Benchmarking can be carried out as part of Comparative Studies made by Ring of Ethereum Architects .
5. Miscellaneous
Meeting biweekly proposed.
@Ethernian will create a poll to move existion chat group from telegram to somewhere.