Bitcoin Forum

I've heard mainly bad things about Ripple so far.

One person told me it is the perfect compliment to Bitcoin as it allows us to exchange our cryptocurrencies in a similar P2P manner. But many things about it worry me including, the central control over XRP supply. As I understand it XRP are only there as transaction tokens so that people can see that money has been exchanged. The real cryptos exchanged must be stored by Ripple in some other way unless I have that wrong. They (Ripple | Open Coin) also have kept most of these coins and have abandoned mining (proof of work) without any similar alternative (proof of stake) in favor of central control. The absence of an alternative solution to this problem means for me is a red flag. It looks like a hierarchy of control due to the centralized aspect..

It must be Feb 2013 where you are today.

How's the weather? What's on the news?

y?

https://ripple.com/wiki/Consensus

simple answer: yes its a scam.

Galahad, I'm serious about Bitcoin and Ripple, and I work to dispel FUD in the name of progress.
Ripple is a way to trade Bitcoin in a decentralized manner. You have to trust that your gateway/s will remit, but you don't have to rely on them to trade your Bitcoin balances in Ripple. It's different than using an exchange site in conjunction with a Bitcoin wallet. You can trivially plug into Ripple yourself and move around all kinds of balances in a variety of currencies.
OpenCoin's system is to award themselves 100 billion XRP, and distribute and sell 80 billion of these over time. I personally do not understand why people would object to this. Ripple is a distributed payment processing system, not a way for random people to receive free money in the form of XRP. However, the scheme for the distribution of XRP makes it likely that large amounts of people will actually receive some free money (this has already started as the Bitcoin community is well aware), which is very cool in my opinion.
I call XRP the world's newest commodity money. It is both a "real crypto" and a token for paying network fees. Lots of info here: https://ripple.com/wiki/.
OpenCoin have pledged to GIVE AWAY 55 billion XRP, and they will be selling their own 25 billion XRP supply to fund their operations. So yes, they have "kept the XRP", and we must trust they will distribute it in a logical manner. But Ripple will be open sourced eventually, and if the community doesn't agree with OpenCoin's conduct, they can just start their own Ripple using the same technology. The time has certainly not come yet for criticizing OpenCoin over centralized control. When this time comes, my prediction is people will be saying: "Wow, OC did real good.".

With regard to PoW and PoS, Ripple uses an alternative solution called Consensus. Here's a video that explains it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pj1QVb1vlC0&feature=youtu.be

OK thanks for explaining that. Are you working on Ripple anyway or just interested like me?

Ripple is a closed source centralized payment system.

It's not a scam, because they don't promise anything (other than lying about being open source and decentralized). I'd say it's a failed implementation of a decent original ripple idea.

Proof?

Ripple is not a scam, listen to this...

Number of XRP that can ever exist: 100 billion XRP
This total of 100 billion XRP are distributed in this fashion:
Number of XRP kept by founters: 20 billion XRP
Number of XRP kept by OpenCoin: 80 billion XRP

This 80 billion XRP OpenCoin will be distributed in this fashion:
Number of XRP that OpenCoin is going to sell to fund ongoing development beyond the initial angel investment: 30 billion XRP
Number of XRP  that OpenCoin  will give away to spur adoption: 50 billion XRP

Let me address your biggest fears... So, average Bitcoiner will say, OK this is the fraud, OpenCoin and founders have too many XRP, if they dump, we are going to lose our money... Am I right?

Well, it's a wrong logic.

This is why...
When you start with Ripple Network, you start with IOU, either BTC IOU or USD IOU in the case you are using Bitstamp, so you don't hold XRP.

So, let's suppose that OpenCoin is a fraudster company and that the dump actually is going to happen, what will happen to your BTC IOU or your USD IOU... Absolutely NOTHING! You will still have the same amount of BTC IOU or USD IOU as you had before the dump.

When you make exchange from BTC IOU to USD IOU, you are a holder of  XRP for the fraction of second, that could not influence your BTC IOU or USD IOU stash, you are completely safe.

Benefits that Ripple brings to Bitcoin is a P2P Currency Exchange, so it will make Bitcoin stronger, no government could shut it down. Currently, Bitcoin is vulnerable, because Bitcoin Exchanges are websites which could be shut down easily if Bitcoin is declared illegal by world goverments and believe me Bitcoin could not survive without exchanges, he will lose it's value very fast.

So that's it, holding XRP is a question of preference, you can be in the Ripple Network, do the trades and NEVER hold XRP if you don't like that.

I hope that I helped a bit.

Cheers

You do need to keep small reserve per wallet actually. This is where XRP value comes from.

http://web.archive.org/web/20130408174039/https://ripple.com/


https://ripple.com/ -> download source code

Oh wait, there is no such link?!  ???  ???  ???

You can't have a decentralized system without the open source code.


I take my words back – Ripple is a scam.

All things you need to know about Ripple: http://ripplescam.org/

Actually no it is far from trivial to plug in to Ripple, because the source code for the plug-in, the daemon whereby you plug in ("rippled") is missing currently.

I wanted to plug in various currencies, or as it were permit various currencies to plug in by making gateways for various currencies, but so far that still is being put off seemingly indefinitely.

-MarkM-

Your link is out of dated. The "download source code" link is pointing to old location of ripple client on github. Currently it is in https://github.com/ripple/ripple-client

As for ripple server, it is clearly stated on official wiki page (https://ripple.com/wiki/Rippled#Rippled)



Right now, as wiki states, sources are provided to "select business partners", so it is decentralized. Sources will be opened to general public when beta testing is done.


ripplescam.org is a piece of stinky scam itself with a lot of misleading statements. It is very funny when scammers blame somebody in scamming.

Did you contact OpenCoin on that matter? Providing assistance for new gateways is among their highest priority tasks.

This consensus has too many assumptions and its description uses "unlikely" word too often. BS IMO.

"Too many" is the assumption that validators are unlikely to collude. Bitcoin mining is also based on the assumption that it is unlikely that somebody will have enough computing power to break the blockchain.

RSA security based on assumption that it is unlikely that somebody can factorize a big number.
Bitcoin and RSA are protected by economical laws (resources are limited). See the difference?

Yes I know the difference. Both approaches have pros and cons. Both are fine to me as long as they work.

No i don't think it is a scam, they still have to distribute an amount of the created ripple though

Is there any normal ripple exchange? Not a forum.

Ripple is currency exchange.

By the way, with 1Ghash/sec for $50, it will take about $25M to hack bitcoin network which is worth over $1B with 51% attack.

Fresh news from the Ripple blog:

Open-sourcing Ripple is just around the corner (https://ripple.com/blog/new-team-members-join-as-ripple-approaches-open-source/)

Good point.

Just PR. They r not that crazy to publish sources of the server.

They certainly do not look crazy, that's why they will publish sources of the server, or their project is dead.

ripple is a scam.

The only client the average user can use is a web based client.  That means the owner of the site has complete control of your password and account.  What if ripple.org went down tomorrow like "my bitcoin wallet".  Could you sell your coins?  I do think bitcoin is flawed in that it should be a ledger.  But you should not trust anyone.  You can trust your bank, you can trust Obama, you can trust Hitler, I don't!

After they publish the sources we'll see hundreds thousands millions clones of Ripple. So they won't do it.

Bitcoin source is published. We have dozens clones of bitcoin. So what?

No, he doesn't. No account is created anywhere on the web. Ripple client creates a wallet on your pc. Wallet name and password encrypt/decrypt it. You have an option to back up your wallet in a cloud. The owner of the cloud does not have access to you password either.

Only via forum posts basically. I am not looking to get some special foot in the door of a closed source system, what I had been about to do was to modify the gateway code per each of several coin types as free open source gateway code for a bunch of coins, based on the free open source gateway code already available in the samples collection.

However in addition to learning that people would not be able to use the gateway code due to unavailability of the rippled code, I also was told that actually the gateway code itself isn't suitable for real use, so all in all it seemed it was too early yet for people to start putting up gateways.

It also turned out that using other people's rippled means revealing your 'secret' to them, that was the biggest reason in fact for the absolute need to run a rippled of one's own.

So all in all it was a long way from being ready for people to start realistically using.

Before starting to adapt the gateway to more currencies for example, it needs to be robust enough for real production use.

Presumably the gateways online so far are either flaky code, not suitable for use, or had failed to submit pull requests of their fixes, or were straight-out proprietary systems from the get-go.

-MarkM-

Ripple devs control 50% of all coins. Someone will launch "non-premined" version and grab almost 100% of userbase. And then original Ripple will die.

Ripple was extremely unstable just few month ago. But it is rapidly improving. Hopefully, when it is open sourced, it will be stable enough for use by business.
 

And how will this "non-premined" thing is going to happen?

Creators of a clone will give away 100% of the coins.

This is not that simple to do.

This issue was discussed on ripple forum. It is not easy to come up with automated way to distribute coins which guarantees a fair distribution. So, evidently OpenCoin gave up on this problem, and decided to do it centralized way. If you come up with a good distribution method, go ahead, make a ripple clone, I will switch to it.

A few random Ripple Stooges wander into Alt Coin...
Even One-Man-PR-Juggernaut David Schwartz is dipping his toe in the waters 'round here...
Though Jed remains missing and the police file has been sealed...
Chris Larsen continues to gives speeches to Girl Guide troops and Little League baseball teams.

Wait.

Is something stirring in the Ripple Ghost Town?
Are servers being open sourced?
Are the bugs under control?
Legit gateways on board?
Actual economic activity on the network detected?

No.

It's just another SWANKY conference in GLITZY LAS VEGAS in October...
Which will tide OpenCoin into the New Year quite nicely.

NOTHING TO SEE HERE. MOVE ALONG.

Man, stop intoxicating yourself with the crap you have. Have some vodka instead, but do not put ice into it. It is natural, it is good for your physical shape, it clears your brain and it is legal.

Best regards,
Ripple Stooge

It is not a scam just a bad idea.

I think not, more promotion needed for this idea.

The key point is to distribute ALL coins, no matter how u choose whom to give the money. A "non-premined" Ripple clone will be much more popular and will kill the original Ripple. That's why they won't publish the sources. Dixi.

Probably because there is a missing 20 billion to account for. What can possibly be the purpose of retaining so much XRP if not to exert control?

I prefer the term "ploy." They are too clever to make it technically a scam, knowing how vigilant bitcoiners are to outright direct scamming. Instead it is misleadingly closed-source, centralized, and neutered by OpenCoin's cynical and transparent money grab - a crippled ripple.

It lures people in with glitzy marketing and strings them along with promises of "fair" distribution of "worthless" XRP, open-sourcing, and decentralization, but the tiniest bit of investigation reveals the contradictions, the carefully tuned deceptiveness, the straw-grasping in argumentation, the spin-doctoring of deal-breaking issues, and the emptiness and needlessness of OC's free-floating promises.

If OC actually fully open sources all the code within a year and it turns out to be decentralized, I'll be happy to eat my words, but I believe the chances of that happening are slim to none. They might open the code in some token way, but I suspect there will always be a catch. After a while you develop a nose for dodgy intentions, and OCripple reeks to high heaven.

+1

Is open source necessarily control over the source though? Even if they Open Source it what's to stop them from not fixing issues raised by the community or of just keeping it to themselves? I'm not saying they will necessarily do this.

54 votes, not bad.

You can sign transactions offline and never need to expose your secrets to a rippled instance. Running your own "signing" rippled locally only saves you from re-implementing https://github.com/ripple/ripple-lib/blob/develop/bin/rsign.js, that's all. The way to construct and sign a transaction is outlined at https://ripple.com/wiki/Constructing_a_transaction, how to get it to the network is outlined at https://ripple.com/wiki/Robustly_submitting_a_transaction. You can take the fully signed transaction and submit it to any rippled out there that is networked, also the one operated by e.g. Bitstamp if you mistrust OpenCoin's public servers.

Gateways are Ripple clients basically, not servers. You can run a gateway just fine against any rippled out there, the upside to running your own is that you have a node under your control for sure, have a voice in the voting process and can be sure if something fails that it was most likely your fault, not a random server on the net suddenly failing.

The way to contact OpenCoin to get access to rippled sources is not via forum PMs, you need to send a mail to partners@ripple.com, as outlined on https://ripple.com/wiki/Rippled. Most gateways I know do develop their own codebase though to interface their systems with Ripple, the code that is published as example might really be more of an example than being used anywhere in the wild.

The gateway code wasn't signing, if I recall correctly, thus required a rippled of one's own in order to use it.

Since it looks more and more like the thing is never really going to be open source I get less and less interested over time in wasting any time trying to hack up stuff to work with it.

If it ever actually does become open source I will have another look at it then, in the meantime it seems like being a timesink could be yet another aspect of its slick little trap/trick/cleverness.

By then maybe interfacing with it won't be needed at all, afterall already there is a bridge to bitcoin so one might as well just stick to bitcoin and if customers want to use Ripple tell them oh yeah great no problem, send real on the blockchain bitcoins using Ripple, that is fine...

-MarkM-

IMO the value isn't in who owns the XRP. XRP isn't really geared to be a commodity like Bitcoin is.

The true value is in the gateways that get signed up on that network.

I think this concept can also be applied to Bitcoin. If PayPal started a straight up replica Bitcoin altcoin tomorrow and extended easy money in-money out options, how long would Bitcoin remain popular? Even if PayPal premined a good amount.

Anyways, I await the open sourcing. I'd love to see which theory proves true! :)

Yeah, I can understand that, though having the ability to run your own rippled and/or to look at its code is not that much of a game-changer to be honest.

Hiring someone whose sole responsibility consists of getting the code ready for opening the code for the public and stating numerous times that they will open the server code (most recent discussion with them: https://ripple.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=3602, 2 weeks ago) is not enough for you?

What would you need rippled code for exactly that would help you to develop gateway code and logic (other than peace of mind that you have the theoretical ability to run one on your own and that you could verify the inner workings and algorithms are actually working as documented on the wiki)?

Guys, please welcome the newest member of the OpenCoin team for sharing his thoughts with us.
Thank you Jon! :D

I wasn't looking to develop gateway code and logic, I was looking to s/bitcoin/devcoin/, s/8333/####/, s/BTC/DVC/ type stuff, that is basically to clone a working gateway giving it a different port number to connect to for a coin daemon so that it would be a gateway for some other coin than bitcoin, so people could run devcoin, geistgeld, coiledcoin, groupcoin, ixcoin, i0coin etc etc etc gateways just as easily as bitcoin gateways.

Now that a bitcoin bridge exists, I would want to do the same to that code, to spawn bridges for coins other than bitcoin.

And so on.

In other words the usual things one can do with normal open source stuff.

-MarkM-

Well, that's possible right now and does not require you to run your own rippled.

Most likely you would need to develop against the https://ripple.com/wiki/Services_API and having more people actively developing bridges other than Bitstamp would be actually a great thing to have.

The code for this is NOT part of rippled though, so it either is not in OpenCoin's hands at all or just not existing. All you could do with rippled sources is to verify what happens internally once you send requests though these APIs.

What made rippled necessary was the fact that gateway code assumed you control the rippled it communicates with, that is, it did not encrypt your secret.

Maybe the latest gateway and bridge code does encrypt so no longer needs you to run your own rippled, if so great. If it is reasonably stable maybe it is ready for use with other coins by changing the port number the coin name etc... If not I guess its not time yet to base other coin gateways on the prototype built for bitcoin.

Its just that last time I actually tried to go get a gateway to change which coin it gateways too, the prototype gateway was not yet really working well enough to be ready to be adapted for each of all the other coins that are out there. If the bridge is stable maybe I will try cloning that for other coins instead of trying to clone the gateway.

-MarkM-

It is definitely a SCAM.
A fool has created the coins and got 8% and a sudden just decided to sell all: http://www.coindesk.com/price-ripple-xrp-plummets-co-founde-9-billion-selloff/

I saw this in a group on Facebook:

PS.Sorry to resurrect the topic  :-X

Isn't ripple an IOU.  You create these TRUST lines.  If people don't honor it then your IOU you gained is not worth much.  So I guess ripple is a shitty concept because people will always  default.  That is my view.  Have to tell you I it's too complicated for me so I never bother to figure it out. hehe