INTERNET-DRAFT Walter Stanish Intended status: Experimental The IFEX Project Obsoletes: draft-stanish-imic-00 November 2012 Expires: May 23, 2013 Internet Market Identification Code (IMIC) draft-stanish-imic-01 Abstract An Internet MIC (IMIC) identifies an internet-based financial market in a manner that is superset-compatible with the ISO's existing Market Identification Code (MIC) standard [ISO10383]. This document obsoletes draft-stanish-imic-00. Status of this Memo This memo defines an Experimental Protocol for the Internet community. This memo does not specify an Internet standard of any kind. Discussion and suggestions for improvement are requested. Distribution of this memo is unlimited. Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet- Drafts is at http://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/. Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress." This document is an individual submission. Comments are solicited and should be addressed to the author(s). This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79. This Internet-Draft will expire on May 23, 2013. The IFEX Project / ifex-project.org [Page 1]
INTERNET-DRAFT Expires: May 23, 2013 November 2012 Copyright Notice Copyright (c) 2012 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the document authors. All rights reserved. This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document. Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as described in the Simplified BSD License. 1. Introduction An Internet MIC (IMIC) is a four-character alphanumeric code, always beginning with a leading digit, that identifies an internet-based financial market in an interoperable manner with [ISO10383] MICs. No assumptions are made about settlement paths or the currencies or commodities exchanged on the market. IMIC provides a building block with which the internet community can develop viable, interoperable alternatives to legacy financial systems. Technically, IMIC is an unofficial superset of the ISO's existing Market Identification Code standard [ISO10383] that is widely used for global identification of conventional financial exchanges. Against the ISO's MIC registry [MIC-REG], IANA assumes name space management rights for codes beginning with the digits 0-9 in order to obtain an adequate name space with which to provide a financial market registrar service for the internet community. The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP 14, RFC 2119 [RFC2119]. The IFEX Project / ifex-project.org Section 1. [Page 2]
INTERNET-DRAFT Expires: May 23, 2013 November 2012 Table of Contents 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 2. Requirement. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 3. Solution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 3.1. ISO10383 (MIC). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 3.2. IMIC. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 4. General Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 4.1. Namespace Prefix. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 4.2. Identifier Issuing Paradigms. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 4.2.1. Distributed Hash Table (DHT) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 4.2.2. Private Issue. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 4.2.3. Combined Issue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 4.3. Why Markets?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 4.4. Number of Markets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 5. Security Considerations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 6. IANA Considerations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 6.1. Market Identifiers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 6.1.1. Reserved IMIC. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 6.1.2. Registration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 6.1.3. Modification / Cancellation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 6.1.4. Expiry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 6.2. Publications. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 6.2.1. IMIC Market Identifier Registry. . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 6.3. Future Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 6.4. ISO Liason. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 6.5. Security. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 7. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 7.1. Normative References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 7.2. Informative References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 8. Acknowledgments. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 9. Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 10. Appendices. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 10.1. Appendix A: Special Purpose MIC Values . . . . . . . . . . 14 10.2. Appendix B: Initial IMIC Market Identifier Registry Contents. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 11. Appendix C: Document History. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 The IFEX Project / ifex-project.org Section 1. [Page 3]
INTERNET-DRAFT Expires: May 23, 2013 November 2012 2. Requirement In recent years the internet has seen the emergence of online markets trading in both conventional and novel [BITCOIN] financial instruments. Given this trend, it makes sense to propose a standard mechanism for the consistent, global identification of internet-based markets. IMIC provides such a mechanism. 3. Solution 3.1. ISO10383 (MIC) For inspiration we look toward present standards for the global identification of financial markets and exchanges in conventional financial networks. Today's most widely widely adopted international standard in this area is the International Standards Organizations's Market Identification Code (MIC) [ISO10383]. In practice, a MIC is simply a unique series of four alphanumeric characters that is associated with a given market by publishing it within the ISO's Market Identification Code registry [MIC-REG]. 3.2. IMIC In order to issue financial endpoint identifiers within the MIC [ISO10383] scheme IANA assumes management of the portion of the name space beginning with the digits 0-9. IMIC thus becomes superset- compatible with MIC. The IMIC format may be expressed in ABNF [RFC5234] as follows: imic = digit 3char ; eg: 0I7E mic = caps-letter 3char ; eg: XTAF char = digit / caps-letter digit = "0" / "1" / "2" / "3" / "4" / "5" / "6" / "7" / "8" / "9" caps-letter = %d65 / %d66 / %d67 / %d68 / %d69 / %d70 / %d71 / %d72 / %d73 / %d74 / %d75 / %d76 / %d77 / %d78 / The IFEX Project / ifex-project.org Section 3.2. [Page 4]
INTERNET-DRAFT Expires: May 23, 2013 November 2012 %d79 / %d80 / %d81 / %d82 / %d83 / %d84 / %d85 / %d86 / %d87 / %d88 / %d89 / %d90 ; ie. capital A-Z Of the assumed name space, only codes with the zero (0) prefix are initially considered assignable by IANA, with the remainder reserved for private or future use as summarized below. +--------+-------+------+----------------------------+------------+ | Prefix | Auth. | Std. | Description | Codepoints | +--------+-------+------+----------------------------+------------+ | 0000 | IANA | IMIC | Local (or default) market | 1 | | 0 | IANA | IMIC | IANA assignable name space | 46,655 | | 10 | IANA | IMIC | Private use | 1,296 | | 11-1Z | IANA | IMIC | (Reserved for future use) | 45,360 | | 2-9 | IANA | IMIC | (Reserved for future use) | 373,248 | | A-Z | ISO | MIC | ISO managed name space | 1,213,056 | +--------+-------+------+----------------------------+------------+ 4. General Considerations 4.1. Namespace Prefix ISO's Market Information Code (MIC) registry document [MIC-REG] contains assignments spanning approximately eight years, yet contains only a single MIC that has ever been issued with leading digits. IANA may thus subsume management of the portion of the name space beginning with the digits 0-9. Within this name space, a strong candidate for an initial prefix from which IANA may issue IMIC assignements is zero ('0'). Zero is considered particularly attractive for the following reasons: * It is unlikely that a conventional market will be submitted for registration to the official ISO4217 assignment space that is best identified with a leading '0'. * '0' will appear above legacy market identifiers in alphabetically sorted destination lists. * '0' arguably reduces recognition complexity for international locales. * The digit '0' tends to have digital connotations. IMIC therefore reserves the name space defined by any leading digit The IFEX Project / ifex-project.org Section 4.1. [Page 5]
INTERNET-DRAFT Expires: May 23, 2013 November 2012 for assignment by IANA, but employs '0' as the initial prefix for assignments. 4.2. Identifier Issuing Paradigms 4.2.1. Distributed Hash Table (DHT) Using distributed hash tables (DHT) or a similar mechanism it may be possible to provide dynamic identifier name space management within a financial network itself, such that individual markets can self-issue IMICs and have them corroborated by network consensus. Drawbacks to this approach include: * The 'always on, always connected' requirement of most of these architectures. * The 'endpoint exposure' problem. IP addresses for critical financial systems or their proxies are generally made available to a DHT network, which MAY not be desirable in a financial services setting. * Namespace exhaustion. Without some underlying capability for reliable network participant identification, a single party COULD request vast quantities of identifiers in a bid to disrupt the network through name space exhaustion or processing overhead, causing Denial of Service (DoS). The primary benefit of a DHT-based approach is that it is completely decentralized, thus avoiding issues associated with centralization. In future, part of the reserved name space might be considered for assignment to a DHT-style self-managing peer to peer network. 4.2.2. Private Issue Just as the Internet Protocol provides a mechanism for Address Allocation for Private Internets [RFC1918], so too IMIC provides a mechanism for address allocation for private financial networks. Private financial networks MAY include those operated associated with Massive Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games (MMORPGs) or financial simulations. The IFEX Project / ifex-project.org Section 4.2.2. [Page 6]
INTERNET-DRAFT Expires: May 23, 2013 November 2012 For this reason, the prefix '10' (in deference to IPv4's well known 10.x.x.x range [RFC1918]) is allocated for private use, with a total of 1,296 codepoints. 4.2.3. Combined Issue Various approaches have been discussed with reference to their individual benefits and drawbacks. A combined process allows these to be balanced against other requirements, such as IANA's need to perform name space management. Under the IMIC scheme, provision for privately issued addresses is included, top-level institution registration is managed by IANA, and future assignments COULD provide DHT or similar mechanisms for the management of a delegated name space to users desirous of such services. 4.3. Why Markets? With the advent of truly decentralized virtual currencies such as [BITCOIN] the conventional idea of a financial market (such as a stock exchange) MAY be seen by some as superfluous. However, the notion remains useful: * Consolidated instruments such as corporate stock require a degree of centralization in order to maintain rapid settlement of trades * Multi-currency or multi-instrument markets will require support for conventional currencies whose immediate settlement is difficult or impossible in many situations. * Systems such as [BITCOIN] have quirks that require slightly delayed settlement due to the nature of their decentralized, consensus-based approach to fiscal transfer. 4.4. Number of Markets The present ISO Market Identification Code (MIC) database contains 794 'live' codes. We therefore assume a requirement to support at least a few thousand market codes. We claim 466,560 codepoints from ISO's existing name space (prefixes 0-9), and activate 46,656 (10%) The IFEX Project / ifex-project.org Section 4.4. [Page 7]
INTERNET-DRAFT Expires: May 23, 2013 November 2012 under the prefix zero ('0') for immediate assignment. The IFEX Project / ifex-project.org Section 4.4. [Page 8]
INTERNET-DRAFT Expires: May 23, 2013 November 2012 5. Security Considerations IMIC only provides a financial market identification scheme and DOES NOT approach problems of communications security, which are purposefully left to other protocols. Other than IANA processes regarding registration, maintenance, expiry of registrant codepoints and the potential for name space exhaustion, no security security considerations are felt to apply. 6. IANA Considerations 6.1. Market Identifiers 6.1.1. Reserved IMIC The following IMIC are reserved and MUST NOT be issued to registrants. +------+----------------------------------------+ | IMIC | Purpose | +------+----------------------------------------+ | 0000 | Denotes the local (or default) market. | +------+----------------------------------------+ Implementers should note that the precise meaning of '0000' is system-specific and as such it MUST NOT be used in inter-system communications except by explicit prior arrangement. (See also Appendix A: Special Purpose MIC Values). 6.1.2. Registration Internet MICs (IMICs) MUST be assigned by IANA on a first come first served basis [RFC5226]. IMICs SHOULD NOT be provided to entities with existing MICs, as this would represent duplicate allocation under the MIC standard. Such entities MUST be defined as those appearing within SWIFT's official MIC registry [MIC-REG]. Registrants MUST provide the domain name with which their service is primarily associated and the name of the registrant (either a person or an organizational entity). Registrants MAY provide a physical address, and MAY provide one additional identifier such as a business registration or license number. IMICs MUST be assigned randomly from the pool of available assignments and MUST NOT be granted on a specific request basis. The IFEX Project / ifex-project.org Section 6.1.2. [Page 9]
INTERNET-DRAFT Expires: May 23, 2013 November 2012 Thus, the first issued institution code MUST NOT be '001'. Institutions unhappy with their random assignment for legitimate reasons (such as unfortunate numerological connotations) MAY request one (1) replacement assignment. No further replacement is allowed. Registrants requesting replacement assignments automatically cause their initial allocation to expire (see Expiry, below). 6.1.3. Modification / Cancellation Registrants MUST contact IANA to cancel or change the details associated with their registration. Authentication procedures will be stipulated at IANA's discression. 6.1.4. Expiry In case of imminent name space exhaustion and no viable alternative avenues for expansion, IANA MAY consider the expiry of a registrant's stated primary domain for a reasonable period (as determined by IANA) as adequate grounds for the deallocation of an IMIC. Deallocated IMIC MUST be immediately returned to the pool of available allocations, and MUST be re-issued to new parties on a first come, first served [RFC5226] basis. 6.2. Publications 6.2.1. IMIC Market Identifier Registry IANA SHALL publish revisions to the global registry of IMIC institution identifiers as changes are made. The registry SHALL include date of registration and date of last modification of each record, in addition to registrant information and the assigned institution code. 6.3. Future Considerations In future, part of the reserved name space might be considered for assignment to a DHT-style self-managing peer to peer network. 6.4. ISO Liason In the future, at IANA's discretion, it may be worthwhile for the sake of preventing double assignment to contact the ISO's ISO10383 The IFEX Project / ifex-project.org Section 6.4. [Page 10]
INTERNET-DRAFT Expires: May 23, 2013 November 2012 managing authority (SWIFT) via http://www.iso15022.org/ and advise them of leading-digit MIC name space utilization. 6.5. Security IANA MUST provide adequate authentication of registrant institution communications in order to prevent the subversion of established institutions' registration information via IANA's registrar functions. As IANA is likely to have superior experience in this domain, specific procedures are left to IANA's judgement. The IFEX Project / ifex-project.org Section 6.5. [Page 11]
INTERNET-DRAFT Expires: May 23, 2013 November 2012 7. References 7.1. Normative References [ISO10383] ISO TC 68/SC 4 (Securities and related financial instruments), "ISO 10383:2003: Securities and related financial instruments - Codes for exchanges and market identification (MIC)", ISO10383:2003. http://www.iso.org/iso/catalogue_detail? csnumber=33444 [MIC-REG] SWIFT, "ISO10383, Codes for exchanges and market identification", October 3rd, 2011. http://www.iso15022.org/MIC/homepageMIC.htm [RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997. [RFC5226] Narten, T., and H. Alvestrand, "Guidelines for Writing an IANA Considerations Section in RFCs", BCP 26, RFC 5226, May 2008. [RFC5234] Crocker, D. and P. Overell, "Augmented BNF for Syntax Specifications: ABNF", STD 68, RFC 5234, January 2008. 7.2. Informative References [BITCOIN] Nakamoto, S., "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System", 2009-05-24. http://www.bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf [RFC1918] Rekhter, Y. et al, "Address Allocation for Private Internets", BCP 5, RFC 1918, Feburary 1996. The IFEX Project / ifex-project.org Section 7.2. [Page 12]
INTERNET-DRAFT Expires: May 23, 2013 November 2012 8. Acknowledgments * Payward Inc. funded the research and development of this document. 9. Authors' Addresses Walter Stanish Payward Inc. <walter@stani.sh> The IFEX Project / ifex-project.org Section 9. [Page 13]
INTERNET-DRAFT Expires: May 23, 2013 November 2012 10. Appendices 10.1. Appendix A: Special Purpose MIC Values The Market Identification Code (MIC) registry [MIC-REG] specifies the following special values of which implementers should be aware. +------+--------------------------------------+ | MIC | Purpose | +------+--------------------------------------+ | XXXX | No market (eg: unlisted securities) | +------+--------------------------------------+ The IFEX Project / ifex-project.org Section 10.1. [Page 14]
INTERNET-DRAFT Expires: May 23, 2013 November 2012 10.2. Appendix B: Initial IMIC Market Identifier Registry Contents Prior to IANA handover, parties wishing to acquire an instutition identifier may do so by contacting the IFEX Project via ifex- project.org # IMIC Market Identifier Registry / version: 20121113-0 # (Version format is <yyyy><mm><dd>-<x>, where <x> is a single digit.) # # Format: <code>|<is-meta>|<is-confirmed>|<short-name>|<primary-domain> # <code> The IMIC code. # <is-meta> Boolean. 1 denotes a meta-assignment # (ie. NOT a normal market codepoint) # <short-name> A short, unambiguous market name that is # suitable to display to end users. # <primary-domain> The primary domain name that is associated # with the codepoint assignment. # Note: # Prior to IANA handover, codepoint owners or registrants can # temporarily correspond via the IFEX Project at # http://ifex-project.org/ 0000|1|(Local market) 0B24|0|Bitcoin-24|bitcoin-24.com 0BCE|0|BTC-E|btc-e.com 0BCN|0|BTC China|btcchina.com 0BCT|0|Bitcoin-Central|bitcoin-central.net 0BCX|0|Bitcurex|bitcurex.com 0BDE|0|bitcoin.de|bitcoin.de 0BFL|0|Bitfloor|bitfloor.com 0BME|0|Bitme|bitme.com 0BMK|0|BitMarket.eu|bitmarket.eu 0BNZ|0|bitNZ|bitnz.com 0BTC|0|BTCX|btcx.com 0BST|0|Bitstamp|bitstamp.net 0CBX|0|Camp BX|campbx.com 0CXC|0|Crypto X Change|cryptoxchange.com 0ISG|0|Intersango|intersango.com 0KPT|0|Kapiton|kapiton.se 0MCD|0|Mercado|mercadobitcoin.com.br 0MTG|0|MtGox|mtgox.com 0KRK|0|Kraken|kraken.com 0VCX|0|Vircurex|vircurex.com 0VEX|0|VirtEx|cavirtex.com 0VRW|0|Virwox|virwox.com The IFEX Project / ifex-project.org Section 10.2. [Page 15]
INTERNET-DRAFT Expires: May 23, 2013 November 2012 11. Appendix C: Document History draft-stanish-imic-01 (2012-11-23) - Resolve minor typographical and formatting errors. draft-stanish-imic-00 (2012-11-13) - Update ABNF specification to respect case - Added more explicit human language description of code format (ie. explicit mention of code length and structure in English) - Added initial registry contents. draft-imic-00 (2011-11-17) - Initial release. The IFEX Project / ifex-project.org Section 11. [Page 16]
