Reclassifying ARC as Historic

This document calls for a conclusion to the experiment defined by “The Authenticated Received Chain (ARC) Protocol” [RFC8617], and recommends that ARC no longer be deployed or relied upon between disparate senders and receivers. The document summarizes what ARC set out to do, reports on operational experience, and explains how the experience gained during the experiment is being incorporated into the proposed DKIM2 work as the successor to DomainKeys Identified Mail [RFC6376]. To avoid any future confusion, it is therefore requested that ARC [RFC8617] be reclassified as “Historic”.