WHATWG, a community-driven standards organization, recently developed a separate specification for URL standard. This move has raised questions about the existing standard, rfc3986, defined by IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) and W3C (World Wide Web Consortium). WHYWG claims that its new standard obsoletes rfc 3986 and 3987. However, IETF still considers rfc3986 an "internet standard". This development highlights the need for clarification on the role of WHATWG in shaping URL standards.

Source: https://dev.to/aditya_mishra_b443092009f/why-whatwg-created-a-separate-specification-for-url-standard--58mc