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[cunicula]

You don't think it will have users? I guess you think the same about colored coins, because it's basically the same thing.

I don't know if they're working on authentication, but it would be useful for many use cases. Not all of them need it though. In any case, that can be outside of the protocol and there's no reason to fork the protocol to have a free market of "certificators".

I'm impatient about the public launch too. I'm sure they will put all the information out there when they're ready.

Not sure what solid coin is hiding because I haven't followed that project but, isn't it free software? I though bitcoin had copyleft. In any case I don't think a non backed digital currency can work without being free software. Maybe they just lack the time to document it properly.

Yes, I understand that is basically the same thing as colored coins.

My view is that most people just need a safe, secure way to send and store value. Ripple sounds like something an economist designed (a compliment). It is really clever, but it may not make sense to ordinary people. Good marketing seems really important here.

For example, look how bitcoin has appealed to all these nutty Austrian types. I care about the deflating money supply, but I feel like the a majority see it as the #1 feature. The nutty Austrian types have helped bitcoin gain a foothold.

My question is where will the Ripple draw its population of crazy fanatics from?

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[2112]

Ripple sounds like something an economist designed (a compliment). It is really clever, but it may not make sense to ordinary people. Good marketing seems really important here.

It is a software re-implementation of the century-old paper credit certificates, called wechsel (in German) http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wechsel_(Urkunde) and similar in many European languages. Vexel would the a probable Anglophone equivalent pronunciation.

Do not click on Wikipedia for English translation, because the "promisory note" is not an equivalent. It would take a longer discussion to explain why, but the root of it is in the difference between adversarial and inquisitorial law systems.

Anyway, if you know any Ashkenazi Jew who did business in Europe in the past century you can get first-hand account of the advantages and the drawbacks.

[JoelKatz]

Question: Is there a centralized double-spend database as in the documentation? Or am I misunderstanding this?

Nothing wrong with a centralized database, I'm just trying to understand the nature of the contribution here.

Double spends are prevented by a public database that contains sufficient information to prevent them. We call it the "ledger" and it is somewhat analogous to the Bitcoin block chain.

Since you didn't really answer the question.

Is there a central server or servers? If so, who controls these servers? How is the database updated? Through the central server or servers?

Again, there is nothing wrong with a central server or servers. But there is something wrong with doublespeak.

Sorry I didn't notice this post.

There is no central authority or choke point. Anyone who wants to can run a server. The ledger is public.

Presumably there is a central authenticating server. And then if anyone can provide server. It probably means anyone who is authorized by the central server.

No, no central server. No central authorization.

It might also mean that anyone can clone the program and run their own centralized authenticating server which forks from the main program and relies on the same user database. This is better than nothing.

Anyone can run precisely the same software if they want. It will be open source.

[cunicula]

Question: Is there a centralized double-spend database as in the documentation? Or am I misunderstanding this?

Nothing wrong with a centralized database, I'm just trying to understand the nature of the contribution here.

Double spends are prevented by a public database that contains sufficient information to prevent them. We call it the "ledger" and it is somewhat analogous to the Bitcoin block chain.

Since you didn't really answer the question.

Is there a central server or servers? If so, who controls these servers? How is the database updated? Through the central server or servers?

Again, there is nothing wrong with a central server or servers. But there is something wrong with doublespeak.

Sorry I didn't notice this post.

There is no central authority or choke point. Anyone who wants to can run a server. The ledger is public.

Presumably there is a central authenticating server. And then if anyone can provide server. It probably means anyone who is authorized by the central server.

No, no central server. No central authorization.

It might also mean that anyone can clone the program and run their own centralized authenticating server which forks from the main program and relies on the same user database. This is better than nothing.

Anyone can run precisely the same software if they want. It will be open source.

Great. All those characteristics will make it much more attractive.

Now, can you tell me if it uses proof of work? (If you say no, I will be even happier.)

[JoelKatz]

Now, can you tell me if it uses proof of work? (If you say no, I will be even happier.)

Under normal circumstances, no proof of work is used. Under unusual circumstances, proof of work may be used on a specific connection to prevent certain types of denial of service attacks.

[cunicula]

Now, can you tell me if it uses proof of work? (If you say no, I will be even happier.)

Under normal circumstances, no proof of work is used. Under unusual circumstances, proof of work may be used on a specific connection to prevent certain types of denial of service attacks.

Okay I'm even happier, but I'm curious as to how you resolve disagreements about the database.

Do you use some algorithm for weighting trust? Care to outline the process?

[JoelKatz]

Now, can you tell me if it uses proof of work? (If you say no, I will be even happier.)

Under normal circumstances, no proof of work is used. Under unusual circumstances, proof of work may be used on a specific connection to prevent certain types of denial of service attacks.

Okay I'm even happier, but I'm curious as to how you resolve disagreements about the database.

Do you use some algorithm for weighting trust? Care to outline the process?

The original idea was posted here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=10193.msg146250#msg146250
It has changed quite a bit since then though.

The important thing to keep in mind is that the number one priority of every honest system participant is that there be agreement on the database -- nothing is more important than that. So anyone trying to launch an attack that relies on some kind of ledger disagreement is going directly against the interests of every single honest participant. Worse, they either have to be willing to provably contradict themselves (in which case they would immediately lose any trust they had built) or be constrained to keep any commitments they made, which makes an attack awfully hard.

[runeks]

Now, can you tell me if it uses proof of work? (If you say no, I will be even happier.)

Under normal circumstances, no proof of work is used. Under unusual circumstances, proof of work may be used on a specific connection to prevent certain types of denial of service attacks.

Okay I'm even happier, but I'm curious as to how you resolve disagreements about the database.

Do you use some algorithm for weighting trust? Care to outline the process?

The original idea was posted here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=10193.msg146250#msg146250
It has changed quite a bit since then though.

The important thing to keep in mind is that the number one priority of every honest system participant is that there be agreement on the database -- nothing is more important than that. So anyone trying to launch an attack that relies on some kind of ledger disagreement is going directly against the interests of every single honest participant. Worse, they either have to be willing to provably contradict themselves (in which case they would immediately lose any trust they had built) or be constrained to keep any commitments they made, which makes an attack awfully hard.

Interesting. I think jed makes a good point about how Bitcoin right now is very similar to just trusting a few nodes.

When do you expect to make a full specification - possibly in the form of code - available to the public?

I'd really like to see how initial distribution is taken care of as well.

[paulie_w]

just to be clear, will i be able to buy a kind of "currency" using your system? is there any early adopter advantage?

[JoelKatz]

just to be clear, will i be able to buy a kind of "currency" using your system?

One thing you can do is accept an offer to exchange any kind of currency somebody is willing to sell for anything you already have. You can also place a standing offer that others can accept.

Is there any early adopter advantage?

Since there's no mining, there isn't the early adopter mining advantage that Bitcoin had. Early adopters, however, will have the first crack at any opportunities the system does provide while later adopters will have missed at least some of them. This is, unfortunately, a dangerous area for me to comment on. (It's much the same reason Bitcoin folks can't say things like "Buy bitcoins as an investment, they're almost sure to go up".)

One possible early adopter advantage is that the system may have less liquidity in the beginning. Lower liquidity could mean larger spreads. For example, if nobody is offering to exchange a particular currency pair for a decent rate, you may find somebody who needs to exchange that currency pair to make a payment might accept an offer that's really not very good. You can easily place a number of "not very good" offers and if anyone gets desperate and liquidity is poor, that's a profit opportunity. However, there's no guarantee liquidity will be or stay poor. And you have to remember to cancel your offers if the exchange rates change. So this is purely speculative.

[cunicula]

just to be clear, will i be able to buy a kind of "currency" using your system?

One thing you can do is accept an offer to exchange any kind of currency somebody is willing to sell for anything you already have. You can also place a standing offer that others can accept.

Is there any early adopter advantage?

Since there's no mining, there isn't the early adopter mining advantage that Bitcoin had. Early adopters, however, will have the first crack at any opportunities the system does provide while later adopters will have missed at least some of them. This is, unfortunately, a dangerous area for me to comment on. (It's much the same reason Bitcoin folks can't say things like "Buy bitcoins as an investment, they're almost sure to go up".)

One possible early adopter advantage is that the system may have less liquidity in the beginning. Lower liquidity could mean larger spreads. For example, if nobody is offering to exchange a particular currency pair for a decent rate, you may find somebody who needs to exchange that currency pair to make a payment might accept an offer that's really not very good. You can easily place a number of "not very good" offers and if anyone gets desperate and liquidity is poor, that's a profit opportunity. However, there's no guarantee liquidity will be or stay poor. And you have to remember to cancel your offers if the exchange rates change. So this is purely speculative.

Could you use some sort of pyramidal marketing scheme to create early adopter advantage or are you trying to avoid that entirely? Early adopter advantage is very good for getting something off the ground. It provides the reason to initially adopt a network technology and thus partially solves the chicken and egg problem. Most economic models of network technologies suggest doing something like this to bootstrap a network. My view is that bitcoin could not have gotten off the ground without early adopter speculation.

[paulie_w]

are you guys going to offer the bitcoin community in particular early access?

how big of a role does bitcoin play in your overall plan?

[JoelKatz]

are you guys going to offer the bitcoin community in particular early access?

The bitcoin community is the first to start following what we're doing and I expect members of that community to be the first to "get" what we're doing.

how big of a role does bitcoin play in your overall plan?

One of the things Ripple does is it gives fiat currencies a lot of the behavior of bitcoins -- easily traded over long distances, no chargebacks, and so on. This removes a significant barrier from the use of Bitcoins -- that of having to adapt to fiat currencies that don't match it very well. Using Ripple to exchange Bitcoins for fiat currency is a key use case.

Ripple also gives a more uniform model for handling both Bitcoins and fiat. For example, you can set prices in dollars in our system and people can pay you with dollars, Bitcoins, Euros, or any other currency for which a path is available. So every company that adopts Ripple will be another company you can pay with Bitcoins and, we hope, with reduced exchange fees on either or both ends.

[jtimon]

My question is where will the Ripple draw its population of crazy fanatics from?

Sorry, I didn't answer to this and it was directed to me.
Community and complementary currencies people will have a great system to create lots of them. Also the kind of people that get inspiration from E.C. Riegel (like Paul Grignon, creator of the "Money as debt" documentary series) may also find the software appealing.

And, of course, many Bitcoin users will like it as Joel says.

[Meatpile]

Is this using Open Transactions? Or another completely proprietary implementation?

[JoelKatz]

Is this using Open Transactions? Or another completely proprietary implementation?

It doesn't use open transactions. The big downside to open transactions is that in order to perform a transaction, each issuer must actively participate in that transaction. Our implementation is quasi-proprietary at the moment. But the documentation and implementation will be made public.

[marcus_of_augustus]

Joel, do not want to hijack the thread but the below statement is incorrect or you might be not be saying what you are meaning.

The big downside to open transactions is that in order to perform a transaction, each issuer must actively participate in that transaction.

There are many ways in Open Transactions to perform transactions that do not involve the issuers. Many transaction types involve the client and server but some can be purely client-client and the password protected blinded tokens can be exchanged completely out of band, involving neither client, server or issuer.

[JoelKatz]

There are many ways in Open Transactions to perform transactions that do not involve the issuers. Many transaction types involve the client and server but some can be purely client-client and the password protected blinded tokens can be exchanged completely out of band, involving neither client, server or issuer.

That didn't come out quite right. Basically, we chose a model (like Bitcoin's) where transactions are processed against a public state database and can be validated by anyone. There are advantages and disadvantages to both approaches.