Rationale
The Location Protocol exists to make structured, signed spatial data as easy to exchange as JSON, while preserving the values outlined in our Towards a Decentralized Geospatial Web vision paper:
Principle | What it means for the spec |
---|---|
Open | The format is public‑domain, royalty‑free, and extends existing geospatial conventions (EPSG, GeoJSON, MIME) so any toolchain—GIS desktop, smart‑contract, metaverse engine—can implement it without permission. |
Durable | Each record carries cryptographic guarantees: deterministic canonicalisation → hash integrity, detached or on‑chain signatures → non‑repudiation, explicit specVersion + registries → long‑term machine interoperability. Additionally, records can be stored on blockchains or other durable storage systems. |
Opt‑in | Attestations are user-controlled: users decide what to disclose, when, and to whom. This enables selective disclosure, revocation, and provenance chaining. Zero-knowledge techniques—e.g. proving inclusion within a region without revealing coordinates—are a natural extension and under active development. |
Adhering to open standards for structured spatial data (CRS URNs, CBOR, multiformats) unlocks cross‑domain pipelines: a drone image hash proven onchain can be validated by a Python notebook; a metaverse waypoint can reference an on‑Earth bounding box in the same graph.