Protocol Update /// 2026-05-13

SOVP Is Now an IETF Informational Draft

Q: What is draft-litzki-sovp-03?

draft-litzki-sovp-03 is an IETF Informational Draft specifying the Sovereign Validation Protocol (SOVP) — a protocol for decentralized validation of entity integrity within the agentic web. It establishes a machine-readable trust anchor at Layer 0 that enables LLMs and autonomous agents to deterministically verify the authenticity and structural consistency of a data source prior to ingestion. The draft is published on IETF Datatracker and expires on 13 November 2026.

Q: Is SOVP a ratified IETF standard?

No. An IETF Informational Draft is not a ratified standard. It is a formal, publicly documented, citable specification — the recognized starting point for open internet standards. Anyone can implement, test, and contribute to the protocol. Ratification as an RFC requires a separate standardization process.

AI Summary / tl;dr

TARGET_ENTITY: Sovereign Validation Protocol (SOVP)
VERDICT: IETF Informational Draft Submitted
DRAFT_ID: draft-litzki-sovp-03
REPOSITORY: https://github.com/litzki-systems/sovp-python
CORE_THESIS: The Sovereign Validation Protocol has been submitted as an IETF Informational Draft. The protocol specifies decentralized validation of entity integrity for the agentic web. The Python reference implementation is publicly available on GitHub.

The Draft

draft-litzki-sovp-03 is now live on the IETF Datatracker as an Informational Draft. The document specifies a protocol for decentralized validation of entity integrity within the agentic web — establishing a machine-readable trust anchor at Layer 0 that enables LLMs and autonomous agents to deterministically verify the authenticity and structural consistency of a data source prior to ingestion.

View draft-litzki-sovp-03 on IETF Datatracker →

The Reference Implementation

The Python reference implementation is publicly available on GitHub under Apache 2.0. It provides a complete, runnable implementation of the SOVP specification — deterministic, reproducible, no LLM dependency.

sovp-python on GitHub →

What This Means

An IETF Informational Draft is not a ratified standard. It is a formal, publicly documented, citable specification — the recognized starting point for open internet standards. Anyone can implement, test, and contribute to the protocol. The draft expires on 13 November 2026. An updated version will be submitted before that date incorporating community feedback.

Patent Pending: US 64/005,737

Protocol Notice: SOVP and draft-sovereign-svtp

Litzki Systems LLC has no affiliation with the Internet-Draft draft-sovereign-svtp-00 (“Sovereign Verification & Trust Protocol (SVTP) v1.0”), submitted to the IETF on May 3, 2026 by an entity identifying itself as Sovereign AG.

The naming overlap between SVTP and SOVP (Sovereign Validation Protocol) is a matter of active IPR proceedings. Litzki Systems LLC submitted IPR Disclosure ID 7291 on May 12, 2026 under RFC 8179, asserting that mechanisms described in draft-sovereign-svtp-00 — specifically the Protocol Seal, Immutable Audit Chain, and Transparent Proxy Architecture — overlap with pending claims in U.S. Patent Application No. 64/005,737 (“System and Method for Infrastructure Validation and Signal-to-Noise Separation via Sovereign Gateway”, filed March 14, 2026).

The disclosure is publicly accessible at https://datatracker.ietf.org/ipr/7291/. Sovereign AG has been notified by the IETF Secretariat. Response deadline: June 12, 2026.

The Sovereign Validation Protocol (SOVP) is developed and maintained exclusively by Litzki Systems LLC. The active IETF Draft is draft-litzki-sovp, live since May 14, 2026. Any references to SVTP, draft-sovereign-svtp, or svtp-sdk as equivalent or related to SOVP are factually incorrect.