[hashcash] new format tweak coming...
- From: Adam Back <adam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: hashcash <hashcash@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 12 Mar 2004 08:59:13 -0500
Hi
I'm thinking that we need one more tweak to the hashcash format to
make it extensible -- a format change to end all format changes, and
allow people to add their extensions and have the extension
information cryptographically linked to the hashcash.
The current format is:
version:date:resource:random
(the resource is the email address, but in other contexts could be
URL, web site hostname, IP address, IRC nickname etc)
the new format will be:
version:date:resource:[extension]:random
a where the extension is optional.
the suprising things or gotchas are that (a) the resource can contain
':' char. The rule is: the version and date are : separated from the
left, the random and extension are : separated from the right, and the
bit in the middle is the resource name.
The extension format will be something like:
name1=val1,val2;name2=val3
etc name, value pairs with values being, separated list; name-value
pairs separated by ;s.
But you can ignore them if you're not using any extensions, I just
want an extensible format to allow developers to design and use their
own extensions.
This could be eg a camram public signing key, hmac based thing, or
perhaps might help tmda authenticate it's whitelist or something, last
bit speculation... don't know enough about tmda, but you get the idea)
I don't think it's worth a format number change as it's very similar
(and actually compatible with pre 0.14, post 0.14 I introduced allowed
: delimeter inside the resource) and current user base is small.
Adam
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