2026-07-08: A six-part Cisco individual-draft suite — MOCHA (“MoQ Open Communication & Hosting Architecture”) — surfaces (all
-00, submitted July 6; Cullen Jennings + Suhas Nandakumar, Cisco), building a full real-time-communication platform (chat, meetings, identity, MLS keying, reactions, address book) on top of MoQT publish/subscribe. The drafts were published July 6 (alongside the transport-19 wave) but only surface in the wiki now, backing Cullen’s July-7 IETF-126 agenda request (“Re: IETF 126 Agenda requests for MoQ Mocha”). MOCHA is the clearest signal yet of MoQ being pushed beyond media transport into an application layer: a decentralized conferencing/messaging architecture where each device publishes on its own track within a channel namespace and relays fan messages out, with MLS-based end-to-end keying, identity, meetings, and reactions layered on the same pub/sub substrate. Paired with the timing draft TEMPO (same authors, same day), it stakes out a Cisco vision for MoQ as a WebRTC-adjacent RTC stack. All six are individual drafts, not WG-adopted or discussed; IETF-126 (Vienna) agenda candidates. See moq-tempo, interim-meetings, discussions-2026-07.
Suite of 6 individual drafts | all -00 | Submitted 2026-07-06 | Datatracker (MoQ documents)
Authors
- Cullen Fluffy Jennings (Cisco)
- Suhas Nandakumar (Cisco)
The suite
| Draft | Focus |
|---|---|
draft-jennings-moq-mocha-chat-00 | MOCHA Chat: Messaging over MoQ Transport — text messaging in channels using MoQT pub/sub; each device publishes messages on its own track within a channel namespace (decentralized production + relay fan-out); covers naming, format, causal ordering, delivery, roster management, channel discovery. |
draft-jennings-moq-mocha-identity-00 | Participant identity for MOCHA. |
draft-jennings-moq-mocha-meetings-00 | Meetings / conferencing semantics. |
draft-jennings-moq-mocha-mls-keying-00 | MLS-based end-to-end key management for MOCHA channels. |
draft-jennings-moq-mocha-pab-00 | Personal address book / directory. |
draft-jennings-moq-mocha-reactions-00 | Reactions (emoji/ephemeral signals) over MoQ. |
The chat draft references a broader MOCHA-ARCH / MOCHA-IDENTITY framing, indicating a coordinated architecture rather than isolated drafts.
Architecture (as described in MOCHA Chat)
- Per-device tracks — each participant device publishes its own messages on a dedicated track within a shared channel namespace, so message production is decentralized (no central sequencer) and relays handle fan-out.
- Causal ordering — the chat spec defines causal-ordering guarantees over the independent per-device tracks.
- Roster + discovery — channel membership (roster) and channel discovery are part of the messaging layer.
- End-to-end security — the
mls-keyingdraft supplies MLS group keying so message content is E2E-encrypted independent of relays (aligning with secure-objects’ object-level encryption philosophy).
Significance
MOCHA is the first tracked example of MoQ being used as the substrate for a full RTC application suite rather than a media-delivery format. It complements — rather than competes with — the media-format drafts (LOC, CMSF, LOCMAF): those define how media rides on MoQ, MOCHA defines how a communication application rides on MoQ. Watch whether Vienna treats it as WG-relevant or purely individual/experimental.
Related
- moq-transport — base pub/sub transport
- moq-tempo — TEMPO playout-timing draft (same authors, same day)
- moq-secure-objects — object-level E2E encryption (parallel security model)
- cullen-jennings, suhas-nandakumar