Bitcoin Forum

If ripple.com doesn't proclaim loud and clear that their intent is to find a community consensus of how to fairly distribute the whole of xrp in existence, then a dark path is ahead. For as the value of xrp rises, so will the devil in the hearts of those who hold it, and soon power will corrupt and scarcity will be the key to profits and control. Even if you trust the creators, centralizing the xrp reserves will attract power hungry monsters who will find a way to take over, whether it through government/mafia coercion or economic means. Satoshi would be rolling in his grave. Ripple has amazing potential, lets make sure it is for the greater good of us all.

We have already proclaimed loud and clear what our intent is to distribute XRP. I think any change in the plan, other than the timing, is very unlikely at this point.

It seems to be they've been pretty clear about what they intend to do. What makes you think they haven't, or what else do you think they could do to make it clearer?

All that's missing is the plan how to distribute them.

Unfortunately, we're not willing to release details before the fact because of the risk that people will game the system. Here is what I can tell you:

The plan is to give away 50 billion of the 100 billion ripples. The rate at which they're given away will be determined by how quickly we can actually give them away and how quickly we believe we can scale the network and maintain its reliability.

Now, speaking officially for OpenCoin: We are committed to being transparent after the fact. We are committed to giving away 50 billion XRP. For each give away, such as the current Bitcoin Forum giveaway, we will publicly disclose at least how many people participated in the giveaway and how many XRP were given away.

That actually seems fair and sensible.

And where is that happening?  URL?

EDIT: left the part of the quote I am referring too.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=145506.msg1544053#msg1544053

right here buddy

lrn2searchbtn

There is a sort of vagueness which is alien to me considering the democratized nature of bitcoin distribution which I am used to. The whole ripple/opencoin relationship, the initial division of xrp, and the lack of a clear distribution solution pre-launch specifically with regards to the entirety of the currency reserve, leaves me fearful that human nature may show its ugly, yet wonderfully free market, face.

To the best of my understanding the venture is being managed under a for profit structure, and i believe that is certainly valid in today's economic climate. But the claim of being able to balance personal financial interests with altruistic goals is inherently self conflicting, and dishonest in a sense to a community upon which you will thrive and succeed. Perhaps I have not seen but you have published an intended business model?

From the ripple.com faq page:

How are you guys going to distribute the credits?
We are probably going to give away over half of the credits in a variety of ways. The goal is to spread the credits as evenly as possible among the people of the world. If you have any ideas please let us know.

Perhaps the faq is not updated, and perhaps I am not updated, but my intent is not to point fingers, it is merely to bring attention to a subject which I think needs solving, urgently.  Perhaps xrp can be divided amongst more than just opencoin but evenly about a variety of distribution agencies, perhaps an open community list to which as long as you meet certain requirements you can join. But this ofcourse brings me to the other issue:

If there are only 100 billion xrp, and you need to fund your account with a minimum of 200, then there's only enough for 1/2 billion
accounts? 1/14 of earth's population...? Scarcity is inevitable.

If your business model is to keep half the company "stock", while thinking you will happily give away the other half, then I think you are illuding yourself; and I think if someone said I'm keeping half the bitcoins and giving away the other half it would, well, no need to elaborate. Just because you underplay the value of xrp at first as an abundant transaction mechanism doesn't mean that they won't be very very valuable, eventually, inevitably. I perceive this notion as somewhat scheme like.

Ripple, while emulating much of bitcoin's feel, is missing the one factor that made bitcoin amazing: a democratic, self regulating, profit normalizing, distribution mechanism. Without it all you are is the next centrally managed fiat currency "federal reserve".

Any clarifications are appreciated. I love the ripple concept I just want to make sure some billionaire doesn't come along and buy up opencoin and all the xrp, or worse the government seizes the "xrp assets".

I was aware of the give away.  I wanted know where I could see the disclosure.

Maybe my perceptions are different, but XRPs won't ever be worth all that much compared to Bitcoins. I see XRPs as the tickets one needs to trade bitcoins and other currencies on Ripple. The show is worth more than the tickets. Rather than see XRPs as money, I see them as tokens or stamps. Ripple is a post office, Bitcoin is the letter.

If Jed, Joel and Open Coin have put all the effort into building a post office, I have no issue with how the postmasters distribute the stamps. The early builders of Bitcoin have a bunch of coins too, but the only people I hear complain about it are the envious.

Someone please correct me if I'm misperceiving this.

What difference would that make though? If they're scarce, the cost of transactions and the reserve should come down by consensus. If they're plentiful, what's the issue?

The consensus process isn't XRP proof of stake, it will be purely democratic. The consensus process sets the transaction fees and reserve.

Idea how to give away XRP:

You must make a commitment to fill any orders that want to buy XRP above some predefined threshold...

For example, people will always be able to buy XRP from you at $0.001

Benefits:

1. People will always be sure that they can buy "fuel" to drive.
2. You will be able slowly cash out money
3. There will be price stability, such needed thing in the beginning.

How about 1 satoshi instead?

Even better... it will make BTC and Ripple very close connected.

You mean with an unlimited supply of XRP? That would have us essentially selling every transaction and ensuring the system never becomes decentralized.

If you mean with a limited supply, we'd run out. We'd either have to raise the price, essentially auctioning them off, or strictly limit who can buy how many, which I think defeats the point.

We want to make the system free to many people for as long as possible.

This is actually a very hard problem.

I agree. Transaction fees are big issue for BTC as well.

Thinking deeper into the subject, are ripples even necessary? Why manage network security through another form of currency?

From a business model point of view yes this allows for the creation of value, but perhaps is not the most efficient approach to a truly decentralized system you are proposing.

Have you considered sustaining network stability through an algorithmic combination of dynamically throttled client side "hashcash" proof of work requirements, linked to transaction size, address/ip traffic amount, and other relevant variables, which adjusts according to network strain? Now that would be beautiful.

I say get rid of XRP all together it is a bad solution to a problem and creates more unnecessary complexity. Either that or allow the community to decide how ALL the XRP will be distributed, assuming your true priority is to solve a specific security problem. Thinking you can solve a problem by centralizing control is wrong, unless the solution offered is simply the excuse to centralize control.

Additionally here the ripples are being destroyed, so to think that it would act as an incentive to keep the infrastructure reliable like with bitcoin is void in this case, therefore the added value that txn fees provide in bitcoin are not present here. Therefore why should xrp's have an exchangeable value to begin with? This merely further de-democratizes the system since xrp's are not available for public minting. I think you chose to imitate bitcoin incorrectly in this aspect.

Yes. It doesn't work well. An attacker will optimize their system for creating the proof of work while legitimate users will have to make do with whatever they've got. Also, an attacker can create proof of works in unlimited supply -- only the rate at which he can produce them is bounded. So if he has enough of an advantage over you, you will never get in ... ever. Then what do you do? Upgrade your computer?

We're basically committed now. We're not centralizing control -- we carefully designed the system to not require any central authorities and to use a democratic consensus process rather than proof of stake. We'll be giving billions of XRP away to try to keep the system free for as many people as possible for as long as possible. We are committed to decentralizing the system.

If you believe it will succeed if centralized, why should we decentralize it? And if you don't believe it will succeed if centralized, why do you think we would centralize it? Or do you think we don't want it to succeed? We firmly believe Ripple will only succeed if decentralized.

Is there a timeline yet for getting out of Beta?

Start by sending some here: rDRho51t4StfNqEWrYKBAteJKyDeo5crZz  8)

Yeah, but it's in Alpha.

(Warning: computer science humor ahead)

Do you plan on pruning it?

Geez, now I feel like I have to come up with a clever reply, but I'm too tired. Can you just imagine I said something really clever here? How about a free math joke:

Q: What is purple, commutes, and is worshipped by a few people?

A: A finitely-venerated Abelian grape.

Haha.  ;D

Is there a place to read about the development status of Ripple then? I didn't see anything in the Ripple wiki but I could have missed it.  Thanks

I'll see what I can do about getting a status page going.

some people will say bitcoin coin distribution is unfair, others will say ripple is unfair. i have few ideas how to make it more trustworthy and transparent. you can announce schedule how ripples will be distributed. for example: at least 10% of coins will be distributed before day x, 20% will be distributed before day y, etc. you said currency distribution will depends on adoption rates, but this can also used, for example you can say no more than 30% of coins will be distributed before we reach x transaction avarage per day or before there are y accounts.

The proof of work is merely an iterative process which should increase individually for each user based on ripple address, ip, etc. to automatically normalize network utilization conditions based on an analytical process which basically says:  HEY YOU, work this many times harder if you want us to listen to you because you been yappin too much lately. It's like when you enter your password too many times incorrectly, now wait 5 minutes or fill out this captcha.

Today, anyone invested in a large amount of xrp(like you guys) could attack the network, and so effectively your solution is no different than an attacker investing in computing power. Worse, assuming the idea is for xrp to stay cheap and affordable then anyone with a lot of money could take over the network, which means that it wont stay cheap, and xrp will become valuable as factions compete for control. Stamps aren't cheap you know, and they aren't reusable the way they are with bitcoins.


Remind me why you need an extra 50 billion xrp on the side? I think you are well intentioned but the "ben bernanke" factor here is simply too strong to ignore. I'm still very excited to see it in action, I read about the technology years ago and it's awesome that it is coming to life. Could you spare a poor fella a couple ripples please sir ;)

This doesn't work as well. I'm not lying to you. We really worked hard on this problem and implemented the best solution we could come up with.

First, IP addresses are useless. You can only prove your IP address to someone you cannot to directly. Expecting clients to connect directly to every validator so they can see their IP address doesn't scale. You could have a central authority to which you connected and received proof of your IP address, but we're committed to having no central authorities. A malicious node could simply claim it got transactions from many different IP addresses and thus little proof of work is needed. If you make the node do proof of work to get other people's transactions in, this becomes an attack vector.

Account address only works if accounts are scarce, which gets you back to the same problem of how to keep accounts scarce.

CAPTCHAs don't work because you need a central authority. How do you prove to a machine that you solved a CAPTCHA for another machine not under common administration?

No, because someone who did that would wind up divesting themselves of their ability to attack the network. In a PoW scheme, an attacker doesn't lose anything by continuing to attack. Also, in the XRP scheme an attack is only possible by a stake holder and only in proportion to their stake. In a PoW scheme, attacks are equally possible to non-stake-holders, those most incentivized to launch them.

All you can do with XRP is overload the network and deny service. To do it, you have to keep putting more XRP behind each transaction than those you're trying to keep out are willing to put in their one single important transaction.

The captcha was an analogy to proof of work...

I suppose I should stop talking and start doing since clearly you have weighed the technical possibilities.

The real question then is, do you trust yourself with so much xrp? With great power comes great responsibility young Anakin :)

I'm honestly not trying to discourage you. These are unsolved problems and good solutions might make all kinds of things possible that are currently very difficult to do. But the first step in solving a problem is realizing that you actually have a problem for which you don't know the solution.

A closely related problem is finding a way to move Bitcoins off the main block chain and into another system in such a way that they can be retrieved by their new owners in the Bitcoin block chain without a central authority. Lots of cool things would be possible if someone solved that. For example, that would be a step to allowing other systems to use Bitcoins to pay transaction fees, Bitcoin nanopayments, and so on..

How about a blog?

Look, as far as I know there is limited XRP number = 100 000 000 000.

Now let's imagine you make a promise to sell any amount for 1000 XRP for $1. This will give you maximum $100 000 000 profit when you will run out of XRPs.

Pros:

1. People will always be sure they can use Ripple for predefined value or less.
2. XRP will never be speculative vehicle as Bitcoin is.


Cons:

1. You will make maximum $100 000 000 for all your efforts.
2. Somebody can buy all XRP and network will be paralyzed


Now, in case of network paralyze we just jump into Ripple 2, where you again have XRP 100B, same rules etc...

NO DAMAGE WILL BE CAUSED, that's why:

1. We would not need to transfer value like in case of BTC chain reset - it's only XRP will be reset ( that nobody cares about since there will be Ripple fountain where you can buy them (from you) )

2. Everybody will just need to re-adjust credit lines - this is not the problem because people will anyway do it very often.

So? People, what do you think

Andrew it is an interesting and good suggestion but I think that when they "run out of ripples" the price will start floating and if it just so happens their "friends" bought 50 billion then xrp becomes a manipulable and valuable asset. I think your suggestion illuminates the unsustainable nature of this network security model.

Creating an enormous amount of virtual currency with the claim that it will last for a very long time is both irresponsible from a security pov, inefficient from a mathematical pov, and unsound from an economic pov. Throwing money at a problem, or just using very large numbers to solve a problem always leave a glitch in the matrix, and we all know what happens to the matrix.

XRP can and should be their own currency, based on synchronization, proof of work, or any other digital currency model. Everyone should have the right to trade in their own choice of currency; but forcing the community to use specifically XRP as a means of transaction capability is wrong.

The central distribution model is too flawed despite the creators good intentions. The entirety of XRP reserves needs to be democratized, or the txn mechanism needs to be replaced with a non currency dependent approach.

I will be direct and ask:

Why do you need the 50 billion XRP reserves?
Is this your intended revenue model?
Perhaps you can share your business model with us?

I want to help make ripple a success, but only if it matches bitcoin's standard of transparency and fairness.

DISCLAIMER I'm in no way associated with OpenCoin as for today.

Imagine I'm boss of this OpenCoin company and hold private key from XRP 100B account, here are my answers:


I don't really care about what will happen to network after the point when I sold my XRP 100B holdings. Maybe I will start another one.


I created a lot because I hope for mass adoption of this and I don't want to bother about how to name 0.0001 XRP - mini BTC or statoshi... You  know what I mean, right?


Irrelevant - no comment here.


No... who told you that? XRP is not a currency in my eyes... it's tickets to the show called Ripple transactions.. and I'm just selling tickets here... I'm selling "Ripple" to you.. and you buying "Ripple" with XRP.


With all the respect, let me decide what I need to do... If you think we did not do our homework evaluating all these things you are wrong...

Plus, you must understand that we are not 19 years olds building another start up for photo sharing  at the basements of their parents.. We know how Bitcoin works inside out... plus much more ... so be sure - what I offer is the best stuff for today.



It's my business model... or you think I'm working for free here? I have my bills to pay... my kids need college, my wife needs bigger house.. I always wanted to buy this Tesla car...



It's not flawed at all... XRP is mine, of course I'm ready to lose some part of by spending on advertising. Nobody but me can create it... If you want to "mine" it like BTC, no problem "mine" them from me... Let me save you money you spend on ASICs and GPUs... We have wholesale discounts for amounts starting from 1M and more...


Little piece of advice, stop being concerned about how much money I will make on this, concentrate on how much money we can do together as a partners...

Just thinking, why people can't embrace that XRP is not meant to be like BTC, just go trade USD, BTC, EUR... go make/give loans, transfer money etc...

+1

BTW, can this thread be moved to the alt currency subforum?
(I assume that bitbully will be able to post here ... if that's not the default, can someone make it so?)

As I've tried very hard to explain, it was mandated by technical reasons. We honestly didn't know any other way to do it. And, to this day, nobody has suggested any. I've explained why Bitcoins don't work, why proof of work doesn't work, why CAPTCHAs don't work, why some mechanism is needed, and why using XRP does work. Please, tell us what the alternative is. It must not require any central authorities once initial distribution is completed. And ideally, it would also be a way that makes it possible for us to make the system free to as many people as possible for as long as possible.

He's not going to answer - it's a hard problem with no good solution except for the approach you guys adopted.

Rather the opposite is true I have asked very specific policy questions to no avail. I understand this is all the beginning and maybe even ripple's founders don't really know what their plan is, but so long as the emperor wears no clothes I will be keen to point this out.

I and others have already made multiple suggestions, both for fair XRP distribution policy and non XRP solutions, and there are more to come so long as opencoin is open to change. Yes it is a hard problem, but there are always better solutions and hopefully this topic gains the importance it requires now as opposed to later when it is too late to change.

Let's start a community challenge to find a better solution, preferably with no XRP or currency dependence at all. I would like to start by suggesting to base a user's network priority around their ripple credit network "rating" combined with dynamic proof of work requirements.

Why do you need to move them off the main chain? Isn't it enough to mark them or color them?
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=106373.0

Without a central authority, who would control the keys needed to transfer the colored coins?

The issuer of the colored bitcoins is in control of the initial offering and the final redemption. There is no central authority needed to transfer colored bitcoins. They are transfered in the same way the colorless bitcoins are transfered.

Then what does the coloring buy you? This is basically just identical to uncolored Bitcoins. Remember, the ideas was to avoid having to trade on the Bitcoin blockchain.

You don't trade on the block chain!

I'll just re-quote:

You have to. If you don't trade on the block chain, then the original offeror retains control over the asset, defeating the entire point.

Right, but all of this either requires a central authority or trading on the bitcoin block chain. I don't see how this allows you to trade off the blockchain without a central authority. And the proof is this simple: The offeror always retains control over the colored coins unless you trade on the blockchain. So you either need to trade on the blockchain or you need some central authority to decide which offerors can be trusted. (Otherwise, you just wind up with the same solution Ripple has -- each user decides for themselves which offerors to trust, Bitcoins aren't fungible, and you have to find a payment path.)

How does colored coins help? I don't get it.

I may not understand what do you mean by "trading on the block chain" but if I understand it right then you may not be aware of what does coloring really mean?

Colored bitcoins can be transfered between different owners just like ordinary bitcoins. There is no need for a central authority to keep transaction records. To check whether a transaction or transaction output is of color RED we need just to find whether we can trace it back to the genesis transaction (the IPO of the issuer). Transaction is of color RED if all of its inputs come from transactions of color RED. Bitcoins of color RED will turn into ordinary bitcoins if they are mixed with anything but color RED.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=106449.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=114571.0

By trading on the block chain I mean that to transfer an asset, you must perform an operation on the Bitcoin block chain. That's what we want to avoid because it requires access to a Bitcoin server, takes many tens of minutes for confirmations, requires some authority to hold the keys for the Bitcoin transactions, and so on.

That doesn't help you. You still have to trade on the blockchain. The point was to make it possible to trade bitcoins off the blockchain.

To think about the problem another way, try it like this: Suppose I want to "deposit" namecoins into the Bitcoin blockchain, trade them around with Bitcoin transactions, and then let their final owners "withdraw" them from the Bitcoin blockchain back into namecoins. How can I do that? (And the short answer is, without a central authority or everyone deciding who to trust to hold the namecoin keys for themselves and making them non-fungible, you can't so far as we know.)

But you are not dealing in bitcoins! In Ripple your transactions are in bitcoin tokens (bitcoin IOUs). Bitcoin IOUs require a central authority to issue them. Why transferring bitcoin IOUs should be any different from transferring USD IOUs or EUR IOUs issued by one and the same ripple gateway?

I'm not sure why would you need this in Ripple@ But as far as I know there is only one solution to this problem - the blind signatures proposed by Open Transaction. You might need to look at the OT server cash-only mode!

That may help as well:
http://wbl.github.com/bitcoinanon.pdf

This is the problem we are trying to solve. We're trying to make them different ... better. Bitcoins have different properties from USD -- they can be electronically transferred on the Bitcoin blockchain without anyone having to hold them. The idea is to take advantage of that ... somehow.

For example, say we want Bitcoin to better support nanotransactions. We could withdraw bitcoins from the block chain into a system optimized for microtransactions. Then, when we had a balance we wanted to cash out, we could withdraw back to the bitcoin block chain. The same thing could be done for faster confirmations. However, for this to work, we either have to have a central authority who holds the keys or we have to each pick our own issuer as Ripple does. The question is ... is there a better way?

I can prove it can be done, so it's not impossible. But my proof is a scheme that's not practical.

This doesn't solve the problem either. It still makes it so that one and only one entity can transfer any particular asset. This means that either that entity has to be a central authority everyone trusts or different people pick their own and the assets aren't fungible.

No. Alice withdraws the asset from the Issuer X. She transfers this assets to Bob by signing it with a blind signature. Bob is transferring this assets to Carol by doing the same. Carol transfers it to David. David deposits this assets to Issuer X. Thus Issuer X knows only the withdrawing and the depositing parties - Alice and David. They know nothing about Bob and Carol or how many people were in the chain between Alice and David. This is why it is called cash-only mode in OT server.

This is too ambitious. I'm afraid I have to better understand and figure out what you're really trying to achieve? Time to take a walk in the mountain.

Guys please stop pitching your 'solution' which requires complete teardown of the current ripple design.

You are missing the little fact that they probably already threw a million dollars on this project, risk has been taken there is no turning back now.

I can attest to the intelligence behind the project even though I think it may have some points of fragility to deal with in the system but they should have a reasonable chance with this design.

If you are truly unhappy about the 50 billion XRP in their hands you are free to fork/copy their system once it's open sourced  ;)

A few comments...

XRP as a currency.

XRP are not "just" what you use to send Ripple transactions. They are also the only thing you can hold in Ripple which is not an IOU. I think XRP will most definitely be a currency, with a non-negligible total market cap which floats against other currencies. And to understand why you need to look no further than why Bitcoin is/will be a valuable currency.

Bitcoins are valuable because they are in use, and they are in use because they are scarce, durable, portable, fungible and divisible; that is, a good currency. So are Ripple credits:

Scarce - There's an upper bound of 100B XRP.
Durable - You can store credits as private keys, back them up and encrypt them.
Portable - You can send them easily anywhere using the Ripple system.
Fungible - I don't know enough about Ripple but I'll guess all credits are the same.
Divisible - There are a total of 100 quadrillion drops in the system.

XRPs have all it takes to become a good currency, and I believe it will be used as such. A currency also needs to be current, and here psychological factors play a large role - the fact that many of the early adopters don't perceive it as a currency might slow down the process, but it won't stop it.

The fact that, in addition, XRP are what you use to send transactions in Ripple, will help them gain value as Ripple becomes in greater demand.

OpenCoin distribution model.

That said, there are issues with the distribution model that will either:
1. Enrich the creators above and beyond their fair share for their contribution, or
2. Slow down the adoption as a currency, as people are wary of #1.

In Bitcoin, the distribution model was democratic from the start. Anyone who would listen was able to take a part in the distribution and be equal to the creator and everyone else. Distribution is based on computational work which is measurable and unfakable. People have profited purely based on their belief in Bitcoin and their foresight to understand it. Knowing this is what gives me the power to overcome my envy for those who came before me.

But with Ripple, the creators get all the credits to begin with (some personally, some as part of OpenCoin). This means that the "creators are enriched by people using the system" factor is much more pronounced.

As far as OpenCoin's distribution plan - the fact that they have a plan, that is, that a centralized body is deciding where the credits should initially go to, is a problem in itself for a decentralized system. Also, I doubt a good plan can be come up with.

It will also be difficult for OpenCoin to prove they're not faking anything and "distributing" the credits back to themselves.

I don't think you can do much better than proof of work. You can use consensus for transaction synchronization, and a Bitcoinesque inflation schedule and PoW-based distribution (it would be like mining blocks without any transactions). If it was this way from the start Ripple could have truly been said to be decentralized.

That's good for you, but if I'm going to use the system, I do care what will happen to it after the flood. That's the point - with all due respect to the founders' business model, we are questioning the ability of this system to act in a sustainable, decentralized way.

+1 Meni

So is the dollar, the euro, the pound, the yen. Well, until the moment when the corresponding central authorities decided to print new trillions of these "good" currencies. How is XRP different? Oh, the central authority promised not to print more than 100 billion? Is that what makes XRP a good currency?

Transaction fees have to be paid either in BTC or Ripple IOUs (as per BTC/IOU exchange rate). Introducing XRP is what will kill the whole idea of Ripple. XRP is just another private currency like AmazonCoin!

Um, no.

Dollars are not scarce, the Federal reserve can print as much as it wants. (OpenCoin didn't "promise" not to print more, it is impossible by protocol)
Dollars are not durable, they can be easily lost and stolen.
Dollars are not portable, they need to be physically carried around, and in large quantities have significant physical volume and mass. (I'm assuming physical notes, if you consider bank balances as dollars they are slightly more portable but less scarce and durable.)
Dollars are not as divisible as Bitcoin / Ripple credits.

Are you sure? Think about "Print" not as a printing press but about the "Print' button on you keyboard!

Throwing my 2c in - practice had shown fairest systems are these where rules are known equally to all players. Ripple creators seem to think they can get better than this. NOPE. At best we'll end up in Google PageRank situation where central authority has to change the rules continuously to maintain semblance of fairness. At best.

Brilliant! Send ripples to domains, equal to the total cumulative pagerank of the pages on that domain! You're a genius!

;) :D

-MarkM-

My complements on your great work with Ripple, it is extremely exiting by its disruptive potential.

Here is my suggestion for a solution:

You need some native anti-spam coin, which by default will have to carry some value. You also need funding to cover your investment; for coders to work on it for the future, etc. These are legitimate concerns that seems to call for some kind of a currency, to solve both problems at once.

But from this line of thought you immediately hit the big scary initial distribution problem - if you are successful: Hoarding; tulip mania; acrimony over the fairness over the give-aways. All this because what you have made easily will become not a postal stamp but the native currency for the network.  You have just set yourself up for the possibility of a particularly nasty death by success.

Solution: Freicoin with a twist, actually SpamFreiCoin.

You start off with premine of 1000 trillion antiSpamRipples. You sell them for 1 US cent (or a few sathoshis) each, or give them away for 3 years - the rest is destroyed. After these 3 years replacement of the destroyed ripples will be by demurrage, like Freicoin, about 5% every year. This is the miner grant for making new antiSpamRipples to somewhat replace those destroyed, and to have a distributed way of securing the network. Tulip mania is averted by making antiSpamRipple useless as a currency by having an extra large destruction of antiSpamRipples transferred from one Ripple account to another, above the mandatory tx fee. Like 10%: enough for you not to shrink from sending a few to your auntie and nephew, but enough to prevent any speculation on it becoming a currency.

That's a fantasy. The Ripple wiki explicitly states that the 100 billion XRP will be enough for thousands of years worth of transactions. Distributing XRP according to your schedule would make them no longer scarce, and thus no longer capable of functioning in an anti-spam role.

XRPs have to be metered out slowly. Coincidentally this is also the way to profit the most from them. Coincidence?

XRPs have an effective floor on their price b/c people of opencoin will slurp up enough to ensure spamming is infeasible, however
just like Bitcoin there cannot be an effective ceiling on their price in the long run b/c total amount is fixed and the price can only be held down by selling them off until OpenCoin, Inc eventually runs out.

It seems like ripple can and possibly will have a much faster bootstrapping than Bitcoin though, which has remained pretty "autistic" until very recently b/c it's so unlike all the other fiat systems around it.

I hadn't seen Meni's post before making my own but coincidentally he came to the same conclusions regarding the suitability of XRP as currency.

What's wrong with proof of work?

This, this, this!!

OpenCoin:

"Don't worry, we will distribute XRP fairly just trust us"
"Don't worry, the algorithm works and we will prove it. Soon."
"Don't worry, it will be open source soon."
"Don't worry that our list of employees is secret."

Translation:

"Just trust us, we're a bunch of altruistic humanitarians who have nothing but the best of intentions. In the meanwhile, we encourage you to invest money in our system not because it has been rigorously reviewed or open sourced, and despite that we have kept control over the entire volume of currency units, but because we have given our promise and word as upstanding citizens to forgo our own potentially vast economic best interests in lieu of the greater good."


Are you kidding me? What upsets me the most is how insulting this is. Coming a close second is how Ripple has pimped the goodwill generated by Bitcoin for its own self interest.

If you mean using PoW to submit transactions directly: Whatever PoW algorithm you use, an attacker can set himself up to solve it optimally. Legitimate users are stuck with mobile phones, smart credit cards, or Javascript in browsers with limited PoW capability. An attacker can create as much proof of work as he wants without depleting any finite resource. So you're trying to ration based on something that is available to an attacker in literally infinite supply. Then what do you do? Replace your computer with a faster one?

If you mean using PoW to distribute a currency: Sure, that works. But it's arbitrary, unfair, and wasteful. It makes perfect sense for bitcoin because it's needed to secure the blockchain. It's functionally equivalent to auctioning off the currency as the people willing to invest the most in obtaining it wind up with it, except the money is wasted instead of put to anything remotely resembling good use.

I disagree, and I outlined a solution here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=147700.0). You guys didn't think hard enough.

When I say proof of work, I don't mean proof of work to validate the transaction I mean proof of work to create the XRPs. Users with mobile phones, smart credit cards, etc.. would have to go out and buy their XRPs on the open market. Which is the end-game for Ripple anyway once all the XRP are given out.

Eventually, the requirement that Ripple users fund their new accounts through XRP purchase on the open market is the ONLY WAY for XRP to serve in the anti-spam role.

This is exactly what will happen once 50 billion XRP have been given away.

The only real difference between your PoW approach and our giveaway is that yours requires people to waste money and resources on needless PoW computations and ours doesn't. And ours allows giveaways to be used to promote the system and drive adoption and yours doesn't at least, not as much. Your scheme also allows people who put effort into building optimal PoW setups to get larger shares of XRP than ordinary people who don't. Your scheme is easier to implement. As I said, using PoW as a giveaway mechanism is still very much on the table.

There are more differences than that:

1) Proof of work allows anyone to participate in the production of XRPs

2) The resources used to create the proof of work are not wasted, they contribute to the decentralization of the distribution

3) There is already a large user base of SHA-256 miners (the Bitcoin miners), the amount of "wasted" resources used to mine XRPs is negligible since people are already mining Bitcoins

4) Any additional mining participants that the demand for mined XRPs brings in can also contribute to increasing the Bitcoin hash rate, which is not a waste of resources

The distasteful aspect of Ripple is that the creators gave themselves all 100 billion currency units. I greatly prefer "wasted money and resources" going towards mining than this alternative. But I don't even consider it wasted resources. That's YOUR opinion, and you're hardly unbiased. How much effort really went in to thinking about ways of distributing the XRPs that don't involve starting with a hoard of the entire stash of them?

Developers MUST BE RELIEVED of the responsibility of XRP distribution AS SOON AS POSSIBLE!



No it is not unfair nor is it wasteful. You said it yourself that XRPs are needed to prevent transaction spam and that they have to have some marginal value for this to work (or else they could be cheaply obtained by spammers). You are right that XRP mining would not be "securing the blockchain" but instead it would be "making spam expensive."

You claim that the mining of XRP leads to wasted energy and resources but wasting energy and resources is a requirement of the Ripple system to prevent spam! If in the future the acquisition of XRPs does not require an expenditure of energy or resources, then it cannot function to prevent spam.

What's the difference if someone works at Burger King flipping burgers and then pays OpenCoin $5 to get XRPs for opening an account (after XRPs are no longer given away for free), versus a miner who works at Burger King to pay for the electricity and equipment depreciation to merge mine Bitcoin and Ripple for some millibitcents and drops per day?

There is no difference...except that with a proof of work system the creators do not gain unjust control over the entire money supply.

I completely disagree. So long as the supply is limited, XRP can prevent spam, even if they are given away for free. The waste you are advocating is entirely needless. There is simply no need for anyone to ever waste anything to acquire them. You are arguing for huge amounts of wealth to be destroyed and power to be wasted for absolutely no reason whatsoever.

After all the XRPs are given away, how will new users acquire them? They will have to buy them. That means they had to forgo consumption of something else in order to get XRPs. This is no different than the energy consumed for mining; They had to forgo the consumption that the energy could have allowed, in order to create XRPs. The only difference is that the respective electric company was the counterparty instead of OpenCoin.

But anyway the definition of "fair" and "wasteful" is going to be rather subjective and really there's no way for someone who works for the company that owns all the currency to answer in an objective fashion.

It's hugely different. In one case, resources and energy that exist only in finite supply and could have gone to productive uses are wasted. In the other case, there is no waste at all.

I'm making reasoned arguments, not offering opinions. Arguments are valid or invalid regardless of who makes them.

People can buy XRP using proof of work based coins, including bitcoins. So those who want to spend proof of work to obtain them are free to do so.

-MarkM-

The problem is that you advocating proof of work along side central distribution of XRP, while I am advocating proof of work in lieu of central distribution.

I disagree completely (shocker!). Even if the sole purpose for consuming energy by mining XRP is to prevent OpenCoin from having total control over the distribution of the currency, it would be worth it in my eyes. Obviously you will have a different opinion.

But my proof of work proposal for distribution of XRP is compatible with Bitcoin merged mining so how much is really being wasted? Certainly not all the energy. Maybe some of it (very little).

No, remember I also said once we get the source code we can make a fork, divide all the RIpples evenly between all the people who claim to have thought of a more fair distribution method, and let them all apply their method to their share.

-MarkM-

If OpenCoin waits until there are already a fair number of well established gateways that have regular transaction activity, it will be virtually impossible to convince these gateways to accept a fork. Especially if these gateways would lose their generous bribe of XRPs from the OpenCoin billionaires stash. It would have the same chances as one of the alt coins like Litecoin surpassing Bitcoin (i.e. impossible).

So what? Litecoin isn't going anywhere, heck nor even is BBQcoin. So the hedge funds don't pick them to manipulate, and their users only become millionaires instead of billionaires, aw shucks too bad... actually not *too* bad at all...

-MarkM-

That makes no difference. The amount of mining is determined by the value of mining. Anything that increases the value of mining would be expected to equally increase the amount of mining. All the additional mining, equal to all the additional value, would be waste. The only reason mining isn't pure waste for coins like Bitcoin is because it is required to secure the currency.

Essentially, you are arguing that it's better to waste and destroy resources than to use them to promote Ripple. You are arguing that it's better to make people do pointless work to "earn" XRP than give them away for free.

Joel, how did you decide on this number 100 billion XRPs?

We wanted to do XRP calculations internally in a 64-bit unsigned with one bit reserved to signal that it was an XRP amount and one bit free as a sign bit. To avoid having to deal with overflows inside operations and simplify the code, we didn't want to use more than 1/16th of the legal range. For human convenience, we wanted the main unit to be divisible into millionths. That set an upper limit of 2^(64-2) / (16 * 10^6) or 288 billion. 100 billion seemed the most human-friendly number within that range.

I believe his point is that your bias clearly affects how you weigh the evidence for your arguments. I've seen your posts for awhile, and the JoelKatz from a year ago wouldn't be tirelessly defending a new altcoin for which the future method of distributing the currency is not public knowledge.  He would also be wary of an implementation that does beta testing in a centralized manner, without full release of the source code, in which a centralized body initially controls all the tokens (and presumably will continue to do so, at least with a large portion of them, for a long time after the beta phase is over).

A phrase like "transparent after the fact" will never sound reasonable when the mechanism you're describing is hidden from your audience.  Such statements lack verifiability and are therefore not part of a reasoned argument to anyone but your (current) self.  That this logic is lost on you seems to be as good an example as any for the dangerous effects of conflict of interest.

A well established gateway would require a banking license! Only banks are allowed to take deposits. How many banks will become ripple gateways before they open the code?!

Ah, I see. From a tech point of view it makes much sense but from financial point it is not. Do you know how many transactions are processed every day in this world? The challenge of success... The more successful ripple becomes every day the more likely becomes its failure.

If ripple succeeds I can predict a scalability issue here. At some point transactions will become too expensive and there will be need for inflation in XRP, and OpenCoin will inevitably have to issue more.

It's not difficult to change the scheme from a fee per transaction to a special "fund" transaction that sets a certain number of "prepaid transactions" in your account. You can then perform that number of transactions for no fee. The amount of transaction credits you get per drop could be adjusted by consensus. Similarly, the currency could be made more divisible by consensus.

In Bitcoin there is a fairly clear distinction between the mining done to determine initial distribution and the mining done to synchronize transactions. The first few years are for distribution (with security taking a free ride), after that it's for security.

Bitcoin could have been easily designed so that Satoshi starts with all 21M coins, and hashing is used only for security and paid for by transaction fees. That would definitely cause less resources to be wasted, but it would no longer be a decentralized currency.

There's a tradeoff, the shorter the distribution halflife the less resources are wasted (since the coins are created when they are less valuable) but the less decentralized the currency. If you're worried about the wasted resources, choose a shorter halflife.

Ripple is taking the centralized extreme of this spectrum. If you think about why Satoshi didn't say "I'll assign all the bitcoins to myself, and use them to promote Bitcoin! I'll distribute them to people however I see fit, trust me on this.", you'll understand why we don't think it's a great idea for Ripple.

It's true that Ripple is about more than just the XRP as a currency, but it's a significant part of it and should be treated accordingly.

I am arguing that it's better to make people do measurable, algorithmically verifiable pointless work to "earn" XRP than to give a central body built-in authority over a decentralized system.

The distinction between the two methods of distribution becomes less important over time though.
Assuming in a year or two both systems have distributed 50%+ of total posible units (already true of Bitcoin), how will they differ afterwards ?

Bitcoin will continue small incremental distributions effectively indefinitely while Ripple will have that 50% "Fort Knox" stash in the background.

At that point various scalability issues in Bitcoin (TPS ceiling, blockchain size, etc) will be contrasted against scalability strengths of Ripple, while Ripple's Systemic Risk will be contrasted against Bitcoin's lack of centralization (although such centralization is still possible and maybe even likely since a large enough "printer" or just a large bank can attempt to corner the Bitcoin market, i.e. compare to how Silver market is effectively cornered and suppressed today).

I speculate that two different uses will be found, very high transaction rates and trading volumes of various assets against each other and against XRPs in Ripple, but I don't see many people feeling comfortable storing too much value in XRPs over long periods of time,
because of ever-present possibility of the XRP flood from the "Ripple Fort Knox"

In either system, there is no long term way to sustain the ceiling for too long tho, although, ironically, Ripple enabling massive BTC IOU issuance by fractional reserve gateways might create a "paper BTC market" 100x of times the actual size of the "real BTC market" again, similar to Silver today in which case Bitcoin can become as tamed as Silver or Gold are today.

Do you really not see the difference between
1. 50% of the coins are in circulation, the other 50% will be distributed according to a fair, objective protocol; and
2. 50% of the coins are in circulation, the other 50% are held by a central authority to do with as they please?
Even with the unwarranted assumption that OpenCoin is noble, what about the security implications of a single party storing an amount of currency equal to the total in circulation by a single party that can be hacked?

I agree that the initial distribution doesn't matter that much, but it needs to be reasonable. If it was possible, distributing bitcoins equally among all people would be superior to PoW, but that's impossible so PoW is good enough. But centralized distribution is not good enough.

What scalability strengths? Maybe I'm missing something but AFAIK each transaction in Ripple requires much more processing than in Bitcoin, hence it's less scalable. The ways to increase Bitcoin's scalability are already known - I'm sure such ways are possible for Ripple too but they're not as widely studied.

I do see the difference and I describe it further down in my post.



1. There is absolutely no observable convergence in endless discussions on increasing Bitcoin's max_blocksize over the years, assuming this convergence does not materialize ... Bitcoin will be limited to 7 TPS and tx fees will rise until small amounts are not sendable.

2. Bitcoin transactions can never be made secure without some confirmations by at least a few blocks, and block time gap variance is so high that two days ago I had to wait 65 minutes for a single block to come through.

3. Because block time is sacrosanct in Bitcoin, there is no feasible solution in sight for this, except perhaps for small transactions with some kind of "overlay" monitoring network ... but hey those small transactions will soon become too expensive as blocks fill up and fees rise.

None of the above affects Ripple design. It can (if dev promises are taken at face value) handle huge TPS volumes and consensus is achieved in 5 - 10 seconds. Also Ripple has superior ledger data structures ( https://ripple.com/wiki/Ledger_Format ).

What about multi-asset trading and self-issued webs of trust and IOUs ... all huge additional feature jumps that maybe implementable in Bitcoin using colored coins or Bitcoin's scripting (if / when it gets enabled ) but in reality ... none of that is likely due to 1. 2. & 3. above.

Cheers ...

There was never a reason to; now that there is, some increase is likely to be agreed on. Anyway, increasing max_size is needed but isn't really the solution I have in mind (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=91732.0).

Also solvable with the above.

Your proposal is certainly intersting and b/c I'm unfamiliar with its details I would have to study it to have an opinion, however since being posted last July 05 did any of it make it into any branches in bitcoin's github or was there any uptake on it ? I honestly don't know.

But this raises another related issue:  After being in existence 4+ years and presumably having a whole ecosystem of companies and users around it, so far Bitcoin community has managed (maybe) to fund one full time developer (Gavin through Bitcoin Foundation).

Now compare that to 10+ (?) people (by now) furiously working for almost 2 years (my guess) on Ripple in stealth mode and furiously implementing the protocol and fixing bugs and doing multiple daily commits as their full time jobs.  

Which source tree can sustain a higher rate of evolution Bitcoin or Ripple ? The question is obviously rhetorical, since the answer (Ripple) should be pretty obvious.

Bottom line, Bitcoin was the 1.0 version and a trail blazer and despite having a huge fan base around it and being in existence for 4+ years ... it has achieve limited penetration, but worse than that its rate of evolution shows no sign of ever being anything faster than the glacial rate it has been so far ... this is partly "tragedy of the commons" and partly because not even Satoshi could get all the initial parameters tuned just right AND leave some others tunable to allow the system to evolve gracefully.

In the long run, Ripple is simply a superior technology (assuming its foundational rigor holds up in independent peer-reviews !!!) AND its implementation is being done by a much larger professional team with full time jobs and not occasional pull requests submitted once in a while ...

I will take that despite the XRP 50% Fort Knox problem lurking around in the future because that problem is either theoretical (if the hoard is securely locked up and not flood-released OR self-defeating because as soon as it starts being used to cap or manipulate XRP market it will start melting away since the absolute upper bound of 100 XRPs still exists and you can only sell so many of them before you lose control of the market.

Cheers ...

There are not yet concrete implementations of the prerequisites, no.

I don't see a problem with Bitcoin's rate of evolution, these things don't happen overnight and the workforce will increase as adoption increases.

But that's not the point I originally tried to make... According to OpenCoin, XRP don't presume to be meant as the world's new global currency, and as such the goals of the Ripple project are less ambitious than those of the Bitcoin project (so it's no surprise it can achieve these goals faster).

But assuming XRP is indeed destined to become the world's currency - If Ripple's technology is indeed superior it might happen, but I wish they didn't completely botch the initial distribution.

tl;dr : In this message, I formalize the proposal from Andrew Vorobyov to distribute XRPs but "forcing" Ripple creator to sell 99% of all the XRPs at a fixed price. It seems to only have advantages (including for them). The only remaining question: should the fixed price be in bitcoins or in dollars (or in euros)



Andrew's idea appears to be quite sensible. Here's what you can do :

1. Keep for you only 1% of all XRPs. Or 0.1%. The fewer you keep, the more people will trust Ripple to not be controlled by one big player. You currently decided to keep 10%, which is quite huge.

2. With the 99% that left, give them through give-away when possible (such as on this forum) and also allow people to buy them from you for a fixed price. A price that will never vary until the faucet dries out.

How do you fix that price? It's quite simple: make up the price you think the company should earn in the next 10 years. Say $100,000,000. Consider that you will give-away 49% and sell 50%. That values the XRP at 0.002$.

a) But then we will ultimately dry out.

That's the goal. As long as you keep a significant portion of the XRPs, there will be no trust in the system. The less you have, the more decentralized the system will be.

b) But we need to adjust the price.

No at the start. As said, this will introduce some stability and some trust in the system.

c) But we need to make money.

Remember that by doing that, you are already making 100 millions of dollars. Then you also have your services. And you keep 1% of all the XRPs in case the value increase. If it's not enough then, obviously, we cannot trust you to bootstrap Ripple to become a trully decentralized system.

d) Someone could buy a lot from us to control most of the economy.

In order to become as powerful as you, someone as to invest 2 millions of dollars in Ripple. That's already quite a lot. Why cannot we trust someone that invest 2 millions of dollars and should we trust you instead ?

e) Why not link it to bitcoin instead of dollars ?

This is an example. I would say that linking to dollars might be more appealing to those who are not familiar yet with bitcoins. It would also mean that XRP is as volatile as the bitcoin. On the other hand, as I guess you expect bitcoin's value to increase (like I do), this can only be good for you. But it can be "too good" and kill the Ripple economy. Let take the scenario where bitcoin suddenly rises to 1000$ and you still have more than 80% of all the XRPs. It means that an XRPs will be valued 100 times more. It might be a showstopper for newcomer wanting to enter the Ripple economy.



All in all, I think it is a very good thing. It kills speculation during the bootstrap phase (speculators can still play with bitcoins) and it is completely in line with the "XRPs is not a money, only a spam prevention". It also means that, once the faucet dries out, 100 millions of dollars have been invested in the Ripple economy. Until that time, a transaction would still stay cheap.

The irony is Ripple as a payment system is unsustainable without independent currency like bitcoin being the backbone (not saying bitcoin is perfect). The 10+ (?) people furiously working on Ripple, you've mentioned above, will hopefully understand this very soon.

Proof of work may suck, may be a waste of electricity, etc. It doesn't matter. All that matters is whether it is better to "waste" power and have Ripple succeed or not "waste" power and have Ripple very likely fail. Inasmuch as those really are the two choices, it becomes more accurate to say "utilize power" instead of "waste power."

I don't think it's enforceable. OpenCoin can simply "sell" all the XRPs to itself.

What would be their interest to do that? They could also take themselves part in the give-away.

Yes, they could, that's part of the problem.

Their interest would of course be keeping control of the XRP (and the associated capital gains) while creating the illusion that they have been widely distributed and hence healthy. Probably won't matter much but you just can't "force" them to sell the coins, it's entirely up to them what to do with them.

LOL. How is that different from troops throwing away bales of dollar bills from choppers in Iraq?

The only reason to do that is to make everybody happy instantly for a certain time. The only reason you can afford to do that is that the dollar bills have some value to the person you give them and in the same time you know you can print as much as you want if you need it. This is not the way you can build a sustainable economy!

OC's Ripple is looking more and more like another "pre-mined" alt-coin, but this time with corporate backing and a big, sneaky PR campaign.

I like the proposal to put a fixed dollar-pegged ceiling price on the large remaining percentage of 50% XRPs that will NOT be given away.

According to the wiki here https://ripple.com/wiki/XRP the founders intend to retain 20% and according to posts elsewhere, OpenCoin Inc (which is effectively controlled by the founders) will end up retaining another 30% after the giveaway.

At that point OpenCoins' founders (and through their control, the company) will have to decide if they want to become Craigslist or Google level wealthy, i.e. how much eventual long term wealth is enough ?

If they want to become like Google, they will keep those 50% of XRPs sequestered for long periods of time and will eventually pass most of them down to their heirs, etc.

If they want to become like Craigslist they will adopt the proposal made earlier in this thread to do an orderly sell off of all but say 1 to 5 % of the remaining XRPs at a fixed USD-denominated low price to ensure that the cloud of a "giant XRP hoard" is no longer hanging over the network, but this will still leave both the founders and the company wealthy, just Craigslist wealthy not Google-level wealthy.

There ARE ways to ensure that it's hard to fake the distribution or fake sales of XRPs by limiting sales to aged accounts and in fixed maximum per day quantities, etc.

Cheers ....

+1

Great discussion here guys. The only thing that really stands out is that Joel, despite replying to nearly every technical aspect (albeit biasedly), has not once addressed the issue of trust, nor denied his corporate overlords' intentions. Your silence will only incriminate you further.

What's that Joel? You plead the 5th?

It's like these guys are trying to patent the cure for cancer and then license it to the world; and then they claim they aren't sharing it for free because they love us.

RFC: XPR post-50% giveaway distribution / sale proposal:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=148278.msg1574081#msg1574081

For the record: I have thought of a more fair distribution method, whereby I will receive all the coins and spend them on goods and services in the Ripple economy.

Guys, stop smoking crack and poo pooing, Ripple is Cryptocurrency 2.0

Cheers

Any news from Ripple? I haven't seen anything from them in a while.

Calm before the storm, some stuff might come out at today's meetup in SF