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Ripple is officially open source

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Re: Ripple is officially open source

#21

Post by SJoelKatz »

rxl wrote: post #11

Ripple has several huge problems that will prevent it from gaining as much steam as other cryptocurrencies. First, OpenCoin pre-mined the XRP's so they could hack the cryptocurrency trend and make tons of money if their currency took off. Second, Ripple is NOT a decentralized currency, but in fact a "distributed" currency, which is actually a much bigger deal than you might think. This means it has a single point of…

Don't confuse the Ripple payment network with ripples, its native currency. You can use the payment network to transact in currencies like dollars and Euros.

Re: Ripple is officially open source

#22

Post by nullc »

SJoelKatz wrote: post #14
nullc wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The Ripple network works a lot like the Bitcoin network It doesn't work like the Bitcoin network at all. Except that its computer software for handling transactions. Bitcoin is based on a primarily zero trust model, where every node validates all the data completely and cannot be tricked— except for transaction ordering which (due to relativity) can't be evaluated like that, and so Bitcoin uses a computational lotte…

Each Ripple server does validate all the data completely and cannot be tricked. Ripple uses consensus to establish transaction ordering. Ripple does have only a small number of server nodes today, but that should be growing over time. A node cannot freely set balances. Each node signs each ledger and any change to a ledger entry (such as a balance) must be accompanied by a signed transaction justifying that change or…

> (I'm one of the architects of the Ripple network.)

Please see the thread linked to above. There were several trust topologies given than are obviously non-convergent in your model and you appeared to have no answer for them.

Effectively you have ripple servers which must have central selection/control (or the system is not guaranteed to converge), and they can set balances to whatever they want. ... and then clients that simply believe the majority of the servers they are pointed at.

Re: Ripple is officially open source

#23

Post by nullc »

SJoelKatz wrote: post #21
rxl wrote: post #11

Ripple has several huge problems that will prevent it from gaining as much steam as other cryptocurrencies. First, OpenCoin pre-mined the XRP's so they could hack the cryptocurrency trend and make tons of money if their currency took off. Second, Ripple is NOT a decentralized currency, but in fact a "distributed" currency, which is actually a much bigger deal than you might think. This means it has a single point of…

Don't confuse the Ripple payment network with ripples, its native currency. You can use the payment network to transact in currencies like dollars and Euros.

> Don't confuse the Ripple payment network with ripples, its native currency

Funny, you were arguing that XRP wasn't a currency not so long ago.

It looks like from the code that all the orderbooks are XRPother. Seems like you can't opt out of trading XRP for your other stuff... so the fact that you and the other opencoin people own zillions of XRP is pretty material.

Re: Ripple is officially open source

#24

Post by simlevesque »

dllthomas wrote: post #16

I love the very basic premise of ripple - route payment in trust networks, P2P. I am more skeptical of the particular implementation, and especially the "pre-mined currency needed for transactions" bit, but after some thought and discussion don't think it's as big a problem as I worried (though I'm still not quite confident in that). In any event, open sourcing the server software is a good thing.

Will you do something about it ? Personally, thinking about the possibilities of the network and the protocol makes me eager to develop software that use it.

I feel like someday everybody will have a ripple account but they won't know it. Ripple is interesting because it is transparent and fast enough to enable developpers to create the future of everything around money.

Re: Ripple is officially open source

#25

Post by kylebrown »

rxl wrote: post #11

Ripple has several huge problems that will prevent it from gaining as much steam as other cryptocurrencies. First, OpenCoin pre-mined the XRP's so they could hack the cryptocurrency trend and make tons of money if their currency took off. Second, Ripple is NOT a decentralized currency, but in fact a "distributed" currency, which is actually a much bigger deal than you might think. This means it has a single point of…

First it was bitcoin being decried as a "scam currency". Then bitcoiners called litecoin a "pump n dump" alt-chain. Now its BTC and LTC promoters campaigning against Ripple. Quite interesting...

Re: Ripple is officially open source

#26

Post by dllthomas »

simlevesque wrote: post #24
dllthomas wrote: post #16

I love the very basic premise of ripple - route payment in trust networks, P2P. I am more skeptical of the particular implementation, and especially the "pre-mined currency needed for transactions" bit, but after some thought and discussion don't think it's as big a problem as I worried (though I'm still not quite confident in that). In any event, open sourcing the server software is a good thing.

Will you do something about it ? Personally, thinking about the possibilities of the network and the protocol makes me eager to develop software that use it. I feel like someday everybody will have a ripple account but they won't know it. Ripple is interesting because it is transparent and fast enough to enable developpers to create the future of everything around money.

I'm not sure exactly what you're asking.

Re: Ripple is officially open source

#27

Post by gwern »

nowarninglabel wrote: post #18
gwern wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is cool, but the irony is, the IOU stuff will soon be mimicked by Bitcoin with 'colored coins', and Ripple will lose the last major feature it had over Bitcoin. And at that point - who wants a pre-mined backdoored e-currency which can't be made anonymous or used places like Silk Road?

Legitimate businesses. We had a great conversation the other day at this Virtual Currency Talk: http://cr.perkinscoie.com/rff/ff00120bf2ac2fdfe524c63378439a... about the reputational risk of Bitcoin. There is a need to legimatize Bitcoin with governments or use a virtual currency that is able to establish legitimacy, so that large businesses which only have a marginal gain from incorporating Bitcoin will actually hav…

> There is a need to legimatize Bitcoin with governments or use a virtual currency that is able to establish legitimacy, so that large businesses which only have a marginal gain from incorporating Bitcoin will actually have an incentive to do so.

The reputational issue is solved by widespread real-world use, which is not something Ripple can boast either. These 'large businesses' have no reason to use Ripple even if it's clean due to backdooring, if no one else is using it.

> Furthermore, there was a very strong consensus among all parties, most especially by Patrick Murck (President, Bitcoin Foundation) that Bitcoin is not an anonymous or "private" currency

I would be fascinated to hear if this means that Murck and the Foundation plan to sabotage the adoption of any Zerocoin-like extension...?

Re: Ripple is officially open source

#28

Post by contingencies »

Sidnicious wrote: post #5

For anyone who doesn't grok Ripple, I looked into it a bunch a while back. (Feel free to correct me on any of this.) The Ripple network works a lot like the Bitcoin network: units of value can be stored at a wallet address, and whoever owns the wallet's private key can send funds to other wallets. The big difference is that while Ripple does have its own, internal currency (XRP, which right now is used mainly to pay…

I have had access to rippled for many months, and it is a pretty big part of my job to evaluate different financial systems and asset types and to consider their impact for potential future of financial networking from a technical standpoint. Here's my summary of the most important distinctions between Bitcoin and Ripple:

(1) Ripple includes a single 'asset', the Ripple, or XRP (X-ISO4217-A3[1]: XXRP) with which to tax shared resource use and avoid network abuse. Unlike Bitcoin's mining model, Ripple has a non-profit foundation to distribute the vast majority of these tokens.

(2) Ripple settlements are effectively much faster than Bitcoin, since rollbacks are designed to be impossible.[2]

(3) Ripple encourages anyone to issue any asset. So you can have contingencies' "IOU for 5 euros", or Sidnicious' "IOU for 5 euros" and then you can choose whether or not to consider them to be of equivalent value. This is hugely powerful, since monetary theorists agree that the most desirable and missing feature of an economic system is the capacity to create a record of value (ie. debt, or money) where value is actually being created.

(4) The Ripple reference implementation is far cleaner and better written.

In summary, Ripple is hugely different to Bitcoin, far more aligned with academic thought on economic systems reform, and a toolkit for creating various forms of exchange rather than a currency itself. The XRP thing is just there to prevent resource abuse.

[1] http://www.ifex-project.org/our-proposals/x-iso4217-a3 [2] Can't validate that myself.. though it makes sense you'd know "something's wrong" really damn quickly, since everything would stop working entirely: IIRC a Ripple ledger consensus occurs rapidly and takes majority agreement.

Re: Ripple is officially open source

#29

Post by SJoelKatz »

nullc wrote: post #22
SJoelKatz wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Each Ripple server does validate all the data completely and cannot be tricked. Ripple uses consensus to establish transaction ordering. Ripple does have only a small number of server nodes today, but that should be growing over time. A node cannot freely set balances. Each node signs each ledger and any change to a ledger entry (such as a balance) must be accompanied by a signed transaction justifying that change or…

> (I'm one of the architects of the Ripple network.) Please see the thread linked to above. There were several trust topologies given than are obviously non-convergent in your model and you appeared to have no answer for them. Effectively you have ripple servers which must have central selection/control (or the system is not guaranteed to converge), and they can set balances to whatever they want. ... and then client…

They can't set balances to whatever they want. They have to justify each switch from ledger to ledger with signed transactions. (Just like miners in Bitcoin can choose the transactions to include in their blocks but can't just create Bitcoins out of thin air or teleport them from one account to another.)

Re: Ripple is officially open source

#30

Post by SJoelKatz »

nullc wrote: post #23
SJoelKatz wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't confuse the Ripple payment network with ripples, its native currency. You can use the payment network to transact in currencies like dollars and Euros.

> Don't confuse the Ripple payment network with ripples, its native currency Funny, you were arguing that XRP wasn't a currency not so long ago. It looks like from the code that all the orderbooks are XRP other. Seems like you can't opt out of trading XRP for your other stuff... so the fact that you and the other opencoin people own zillions of XRP is pretty material.

You can have an order book between any two assets. The pathfinding engine will prefer whatever path is cheapest, assuming it's not too long for it to find. For example, the USD/Bitstamp BTC/Bitstamp order book is quite popular.

This is important because the price of XRP is not very stable now. If you wanted to keep offers up for USD to EUR, it would be very irritating if you had to pull down and replace a USD->XRP and XRP->EUR offer every time the price of XRP changed (to prevent one order from being too good and the other too bad). Also, if you couldn't place a USD->EUR offer, what would you do if you really wanted to trade USD for EUR? You can't place an XRP->EUR offer because you don't have the XRP yet. And if you place a USD->XRP offer, you wind up with XRP that you didn't want.

In the future, if the price of XRP becomes more stable, order books to and from XRP may become more popular. But still people who just don't want XRP will place offers on order books directly between assets other than XRP.

Whether or not XRP is a currency is really an arbitrary thing. I just want people to understand what XRP is and what its role in Ripple is. If they think that makes it a currency, then fine. If they think it doesn't, also fine.

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