Standards Bodies

The canonical publication point for finalized RFCs. If a protocol is standardized as an RFC, the RFC Editor text is the normative final reference. Published by the IETF, IRTF, IAB, and independent stream.

The primary standards body for internet protocols. Produces RFCs through working groups. Use IETF Datatracker for active drafts, working group status, and revision history.

Authoritative registry for protocol parameters: ports, HTTP status codes, media types, DNS record types, and many other code points. Not a spec body — a registry body.

Maintains the living standards for the web platform: HTML, DOM, Fetch, URL, Streams, and more. These are continuously updated living documents, not versioned snapshots.

Publishes web platform specs including CSS, accessibility, security policies, Service Workers, Web App Manifest, and many browser APIs. Also maintains some versioned HTML/DOM specs.

Canonical home for OpenID Connect specifications: OIDC Core, Discovery, Session Management, Dynamic Registration, and related profiles. Separate from the OAuth IETF work.

Sets operational policy for publicly trusted TLS and S/MIME certificates. The Baseline Requirements are normative for all publicly trusted CAs and major browsers.

Governs the DNS root zone, domain name policy, registry/registrar accreditation, and RDAP deployment context. Operational policy, not protocol design.

Canonical source for Unicode character semantics, IDNA compatibility processing (UTS #46), and internationalized identifier behavior. Essential when handling non-ASCII domains or user data.

Publishes the ECMAScript (JavaScript) language specification and related standards. TC39 is the committee responsible for ECMAScript evolution.

Develops authentication standards for strong, phishing-resistant authentication: FIDO2, WebAuthn (co-published with W3C), and CTAP. Key for passkeys and modern MFA.

The Ethereum community's open process for proposing changes to the protocol. EIPs cover core protocol changes; ERCs (Ethereum Request for Comments) cover application-layer standards like token interfaces.

The Bitcoin community's open process for proposing protocol changes, standards, and informational documents. BIPs cover everything from consensus rules to wallet derivation paths and payment URIs.

Stewards the GraphQL specification, originally developed at Facebook/Meta. The GraphQL Foundation is a Linux Foundation project. The spec defines the query language, type system, and execution model.

gRPC is an open-source RPC framework originally developed at Google. It uses Protocol Buffers (protobuf) as its IDL and wire format, and HTTP/2 as the transport. Now a CNCF graduated project.

Maintains the AsyncAPI specification — an OpenAPI-like description language for event-driven and message-based APIs. Covers WebSocket, MQTT, AMQP, Kafka, and more.

Industry consortium that publishes open graphics, compute, and media standards. Maintains WebGL, OpenGL ES, Vulkan, and related GPU interface specifications used across browsers and native platforms.