[Bitcoin-development] Announcing the IFEX Project

[Walter Stanish]

The Internet Financial EXchange (IFEX) Project is an open body for the
discussion and development of financial standards for the internet
community.  The project seeks to focus on enhancing interoperability
between financial settlement systems of all types, including
conventional financial systems, emerging digital currencies,
alternative financial communities, and financial service providers.

Interested parties are invited to review the proposals on the website
at http://www.ifex-project.org/ and join the mailing list at
http://group.ifex-project.org/

Two items on the site that may be of particular interest:

(1) The latest version of the IIBAN Proposal (v1) for financial
endpoint identification at
http://www.ifex-project.org/our-proposals/iiban.  This latest version
includes initial IANA registry contents and a reference mechanism for
financial endpoint transcription error correction. (Relevance: In
contrast to settlement system-specific financial endpoint identifiers,
IIBAN provides a democratically allocated, 13 character identifier
that is already familiar in format to users in Europe and other
countries and is theoretically compatible with conventional banking
infrastructure in those regions.  In addition, IIBAN is not tied to
any specific financial commodity or settlement system, and provides
strong protection against identifier transcription errors.)

(2) The IFEX Protocol is a *work in progress* that hopes to bridge the
gap between conventional financial systems, emerging digital
currencies, alternative financial communities, and financial service
providers by providing a standard protocol for transaction and
settlement path negotiation with arbitrary financial instruments,
currencies or assets.  (Relevance: better connectivity, lower
settlement fees, real time redundant financial routing, arbitrary
instrument/currency/asset handling)

How IFEX's proposed infrastructure differs from existing projects:
 - Not a currency, not a settlement-network, but a mechanism for bridging them.
 - Broader and more inclusive scope than existing vendor-specific APIs
and conventional finance industry networking protocols. Global focus.
No legacy 'features'. No artificial barriers to innovators.

The hope is to move towards an open source implementation of the (work
in progress) IFEX protocol that interoperates with major and emerging
settlement networks for the benefit of all parts of the community. We
have already had expressions of interest from representatives in a
range of communities (Bitcoin, CES, Ripple, W3C Web Payments, digital
currency exchange developers, etc.), and look forward your input on
the mailing list.

Happy Friday the 13th!

Regards,
Walter Stanish
The IFEX Project
http://www.ifex-project.org/