Do the benefits that the Ripple system bring to participants outweigh the enrichment of the authors through the self-issuance of the entire block of in-system currency units?
I don't think there's anything to outweigh there. People trying to make a buck is good old fashioned capitalism at work. They've created something valuable and deserve a shot at making money from it. I think the real question is whether it is is anyone else's interest to start using Ripple instead of forking it and starting with a new genesis ledger based on the Bitcoin UTXO set at some fixed point in time, modifying the code to allow some sort of proof-of-burn transition from Bitcoin, or implementing something similar on top of Bitcoin. |
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No, it was created for distributed domain name resolution. It doesn't seem like a good fit for torrent indexing to me.
I know, it's only kind of similar. The Bittorrent DHT is also based of Kademlia. It just hasn't been officially extended to include search functionality. It's actually extremely simple to add basic search functionality. Look at the "get_peers" query. What the "get_peers" query does is send the torrent info hash to other peers who then basically say "yeah, I've got that" or pass the query on to their neighbour if they haven't. That replicates the tracker functionality.
In order to add search functionality, you need to send keywords to a peer and ask them if they have a torrent with any of those keywords in the torrent title of any of the file/folder names. Any peers with the required torrents would then send back a list of dictionaries with they keywords being keys and the info hashes found from that keyword being the values.
I got the impression it was a deliberate decision, perhaps for legal reasons. Technically it's almost trivial to do. The problem with DHT search is how to deal with the most popular keywords.
Anything caching and replication cannot solve? |
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I may have figured it out. At least I know someone who had the motivation, skills, and time to have made it, had no need for all the money Satoshi hasn't spent, and who also had a good reason to withdraw from the community when Satoshi did. But there's no proof, and I'm not motivated to share my speculations.
Here's a fun game we can play: could you use something like virtual-notary.org or proofofexistence.com to upload a hash of a (properly padded) string containing the name of the individual? If the name ever leaks out, we can see if your guess was correct. |
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The DHT just replaces the tracker functionality, not the indexer functionality.
Reading up on this I noticed that the eDonkey network does use the Kad DHT for both indexing and tracking. I'm not sure if trying to build indexing functionality on top of the blockchain is a better solution. It is true that Namecoin was designed precisely for a form of distributed indexing. |
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3. Illiterate
4. Schoolkids. |
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Like I said in another thread, these are the two categories for Ripple haters.
1. Fear (Usually old Bitcoiners with lots to lose. Scared of the disruptive nature of the powerful Ripple network - which actually looks to compliment Bitcoin with INSTANT transactions).
2. Laymen (Usually new-ish members. Believe the fearing established members and have no idea what Ripple actually is. These people will likely say Ripple is centralized (untrue), closed source (untrue) or a premine (this isn't BTC! again, you have missed the point).
Well said. But I don't think the early adopters have much to lose. There is plenty of time to diversify and Ripple will certainly help adoption of Bitcoin in the short term. In the long term the effect is unclear. On the one hand, while Bitcoin profits from the Ripple trading functionalities, XRP profits from them as well, so that could be seen as a threat. But as BTC increases in value, it will become easier for early adopters to fund similar systems based on Bitcoin. At one extreme, someone could create a Ripple fork with an initial ledger based on the Bitcoin blockchain, either by copying the UTXO set at some fixed point in time, or by using proof of burn. In the end I think successful cryptocurrencies will adopt useful features from competitors and offer painless transition paths. |
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You are correct, it does not work without gateways.
It could still work as a friend to friend network. You could say that everybody acts as a gateway for their direct neighbours in the trust graph. The trust is essential of course, just as it is with non-Ripple Bitcoin exchanges. |
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(the actual v0.1 release inserted OP_CODESEPARATOR explicitly prior to calling EvalScript, breaking the idea, so I'm not sure if Satoshi actually realized what could have been made possible)
It seems so needlessly complicated that it must have had a reason. I wonder if maybe he intended to add a 'sticky' flag that required conditions on an output to be concatenated onto any new outputs it was spent to. The whole thing is very confusing to me though, and I'm having great trouble understanding your post. |
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I think that the point is to "mark" the transaction input that is being signed to prevent one signature to be used for more than one input.
Doesn't the signature already apply to the hash of the previous transaction and the index in it? Why would you need any additional data at all? |
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Essentially pubkey1 has delegated the ability to sign the transaction to pubkey3 after the fact.
I'm having trouble understanding this. In what way has pubkey1 done this, and of what use is that? I don't understand why the current design requires the public key script (or a subscript of it) to be signed at all, but I understand from another thread that no one really knows the answer to that. |
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Sure, it's forbidden in some jurisdictions. That doesn't mean it no longer exists in those jurisdictions. Can you layout a simple step by step scenario with 2 users (if users are issuers not gateways) who are trading BTC/USD in Ripple?
They can trade using their trust graph. If there is a path from A to B, then they can conduct a transaction and their balances as well as those of the individuals in between in the trust graph will be updated. Periodically each party can settle the netted transactions with their direct neighbours. Settling can be done with any payment mechanism, including cash. |
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I agree that that lack is a big problem. But I dont see that Ripple is the solution as it needs gateways which are companies (exchanges, banks,...) which can be shut down.
It's still a major improvement. And consider Hawala, because Ripple is in part a digital verison of Hawala. Despite their best efforts governments around the world haven't been able to suppress it. And even if just one jurisdiction allows Ripple, everybody with an internet connection can use it. Bitcoin enthusiasts in China can trade in Bitstamp IOUs, even though it might be difficult to exchange them for yuan. As long as they're legal somewhere, they'll keep their value. I don't understand how people can seriously complain that Ripple isn't perfect if it is a major improvement over what we have now. The system only trade IOUs, to bootstrap that system you need a lot of outside real money or many merchants accepting these IOUs. The only way how to get in Fiat are gateways. So for me that seems to be a major part of the system.
The distinction between gateways and individuals issuing IOUs is blurry. Anyone can issue IOUs. The friend2friend network may be ok. The money is debt idea (IUO) may be ok (even I dont like that).
That is the reality of fiat money and exchanges. There's no escaping except by using cryptocurrencies. To get there, we need exchanges. Ripple helps tremendously with that. The gateways are for me the critical point. In BTC system the exchanges are not a part of BTC, they are the external environment and hopefully we get soon a better solution. The Ripple gateways are the backers of the IUO currencies (if I understood it correctly). Without a gateway you never get real USD for Ripple USD.
The fact that the exchanges aren't part of BTC is a weakness, not a strength, though that may change with coloured coins. XRP isn't any more dependent on IOUs than BTC is. Ripple's interface with the fiat system is far superior to that of Bitcoin. Ripple can do anything Bitcoin can and a lot more (the fiat interface, community credit). And the good thing is that all this good stuff benefits Bitcoin too. |
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It takes a while to get used to the system. It looks very simple at first, then it becomes very confusing, and then you get used to it. The basic rule to remember is that if you extend a trust limit for x amount to a person, there's a risk you'll lose precisely x amount if that person defaults. Also bear in mind that your neighbours in the trust graph will make transactions on other people's behalf through rippling, and that this may affect their own balances. |
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But there is a big difference of XRP to BTC. There is a for-profit company behind it and it owns most of it. I know they say that they will give their XRP away some day and play fair, etc..... but that has to me no value (who knows who will own the company in the future?).
Sure, but that's not what you were saying. Also, fairness doesn't enter into it. Ripple Labs created the software and the initial ledger, and they get to do what they want with the money. No one is under any obligation to buy and Ripple Labs isn't under any obligation either. The question is not whether it is fair, but whether it is in people's best interests to buy XRP. Since the rippling functionality is very useful for buying or selling Bitcoin and since you only need a tiny amount, I was happy to buy a little bit. I've received much more in a handout (~1000 XRP) and I've made ~200 "mining" them at computingforgood.org. And I think XRP are not intended to be used as money to buy things. They are introduced to make the payment system work and prevent spam.
Correct. However, if Ripple is successful that means XRP will become valuable and very useful as a currency. This is how Ripple Labs aims to make a profit on their investment. For me all that sounds much more as a trap to infect BTC with Fiat-like properties. To bring people to the point that they use IOUs for BTC instead of BTC directly (from their own wallets). If its faster, more convinient, maybe adds some small earnings with lending (interests) many people who dont care about the original motivation behind BTC could use it.
It sounds as if you've made up your mind already and are inventing arguments to attack Ripple. The IOU and foreign exchange systems are enormously useful for Bitcoin trading. The lack of distributed exchanges is Bitcoin's Achilles heel at the moment, and Ripple is changing that. Look at the gold ETFs. Many people use them to speculate because they are more convinient to trade and they take the risk that the emitter is lying about the backing of physical gold. At the end the most people using that does not care about the different nature of gold against fiat. They use it to make fast profit. Like gold ETF has not much in common with real gold but very much with fiat, BTC IUOs are much more like fiat then like BTC.
I wouldn't trust any of the gateways to hold my money for long periods, and that includes Bitcoin exchanges too. For short durations and small amounts, it's fine. As I said before the finance industry will love Ripple, and if they will not adopting it they will probably come with something similar soon.
Ripple could be a way that they keep control as well as the state. The US based ripple company and the gateways are for me too vulnerable.
Gateways are only there for convenience, the system can operate underground in a fully P2P manner if necessary. I am not completely against the concept of colored coins and a layer which lets them interchange easily.
But that should come for me with the same ideas like the one behind BTC.
No need for trust to companies and states, open source and decentralized.
I think some day we will see applications for exchanging fiat or real world items to crypto with these characteristics.
There will be a role for both trusted and trustless services. Ripple offers both. |
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Maybe I dont understand all aspects right and maybe I am missing some.
For one you appear to be missing the fact that the IOU system is an addition to cryptocurrencies, not a replacement for it. In fact, Ripple has its own internal cryptocurrency just like Bitcoin. The IOU system and the foreign exchange system built on top of it can provide an excellent distributed exchange between all kinds of currencies, both cryptocurrencies and state-issued fiat money. This is enormously useful for all cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin. |
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But at least I am not the only one who sees Ripple as at least a pretty misleading project: http://ripplescam.orgRipplescam.org is TradeFortress's anti-Ripple propaganda site. It's not a reliable source. |
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It obviously doesn't compare to ASIC mining. I mean something like a KnC where you have, possibly, more transistors dedicated to SHA then an entire Intel CPU.
Are you suggesting the Intel implementation is less efficient (in GH/W) than in dedicated ASICs, or just that they are less powerful per die? Because I think what matters is how this will affect centralisation. If the incremental power needed to run a mining process in the background is less expensive than the BTC it yields, then many people might run it. And since there are so many general purpose computers in the world, this might mean significant percentage of the world's hashing power might come from PCs eventually. Dedicated miners would still run dedicated ASICs, but CPU mining might no longer be irrelevant from a decentralisation point of view. |
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the existing dht is a distributed hash table for lookups of hash data.
I know, but in what way is storing this information in the blockchain superior? Or do you want to store a mapping from keywords to hashes of a torrent file inside the blockchain? So, user queries DB containing data extracted from the blockchain for keywords, user uses resulting torrent hashes to retrieve torrent files from DHT, user looks up hashes of the individual pieces of the desired content in the torrent file, queries DHT again to get IP and port number of peers offering this piece and thenstarts downloading? |
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