SOVP Is Now an IETF Informational Draft
AI Summary / tl;dr
- TARGET_ENTITY: Sovereign Validation Protocol (SOVP)
- VERDICT: IETF Informational Draft Submitted
- DRAFT_ID: draft-litzki-sovp-04 (Experimental, expires 10 Apr 2027) — as written: draft-litzki-sovp-03
- REPOSITORY: https://github.com/litzki-systems/sovp-python
- CORE_THESIS: Litzki Systems has submitted the Sovereign Validation Protocol 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 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.
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. We will submit an updated version before that date incorporating community feedback.
Updated (29 Oct 2026): The current revision is draft-litzki-sovp-04, submitted on 8 October 2026. With -04 the draft's intended status changed from Informational to Experimental, and it expires on 10 April 2027. The text above describes the state of May 2026 (-03, Informational, expiring 11 December 2026) and is kept as a record of that date.
Patent Pending: US 64/005,737
Update, September 2026: SOVP now interoperates with AgenTrust TRACE via an open-source bridge that translates a signed SOVP attestation into a TRACE v0.2 Trust Record — a second, independently verifiable output format for the same underlying proof.
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/. The IETF Secretariat has notified Sovereign AG. Response deadline: June 12, 2026.
Status 29 Oct 2026: The disclosure remains public; draft-sovereign-svtp-00 expires on 3 November 2026 without a successor.
Litzki Systems LLC exclusively develops and maintains the Sovereign Validation Protocol (SOVP). The active IETF Draft is draft-litzki-sovp, live since May 12, 2026. Any references to SVTP, draft-sovereign-svtp, or svtp-sdk as equivalent or related to SOVP are factually incorrect.
Contact: ietf@litzki-systems.com
