After testing Ripple...

[becoin]

The XRP currency as a choice on Ripple's website should be removed asap or it'll compromise the really valuable idea behind this project!

[Sunny King]

So what's XRP? Is this thing issued by the ripple dev team and backed by ripple dev team? Is it a one-time issue or continues to be issued via the trust network?

[kjlimo]

I think I made a Ripple account many months back and someone asked me to join their trust circle or network or something...

That was probably Ryan Fugger's original ripple system. The new Ripple system takes a lot from the original Ripple but also takes a lot of ideas from Bitcoin.

I found it... Villages.cc

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=64411.0

I signed up and messed with it a bit, but didn't go very far.

[John (John K.)]

I think I made a Ripple account many months back and someone asked me to join their trust circle or network or something...

That was probably Ryan Fugger's original ripple system. The new Ripple system takes a lot from the original Ripple but also takes a lot of ideas from Bitcoin.

I found it... Villages.cc

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=64411.0

I signed up and messed with it a bit, but didn't go very far.

I still remember poor David. 

[jtimon]

Everything on the net (especially on their website ripple.com) is very opaque.

@ OP:  Mind telling us a little bit more on how the new dev team implemented the idea of ripple?

Ripple.com will launch the first p2p Ripple implementation, but several of them has been discussed here and there's actually another design.
Ripplepay or villages.cc implement the Ripple concept on centralized servers. If you want to know the general concept, probably the old wiki is the place to go right now:

http://archive.ripple-project.org/

If you already know LETS, time banking or another form of mutual credit, this pages will be useful:

http://archive.ripple-project.org/Main/AnIntroductionForCommunityCurrencyAdvocates

If you don't know what LETS is about, well, there's plenty of material on the internet, but here's a documentary with lots of views:

http://www.themoneyfix.org/

Finally, I find this short video very instructive and profound explaining Ripple in the context of other monetary systems:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySzqM5dpF7s

Then they should peg them and not let them fluctuate.

Are you saying that they should go against the market?

If they are an IOU, why would their value change against what they borrowed against?

No reason why. The unit is voluntarily chosen between borrower and lender so there's nothing stopping them from using 1970usd (adjusting for inflation), a basket of commodities ala Lietaer's Terra (even if there's no backing anywhere and the currency only exists as a unit of credit) or any other index. But there's no need to make any pegging. The host currency (XRP) is cash and it should have a floating value just like bitcoin.
If you want to issue credit denominated in XRP, that's with you and the people that accept your IOUs, but you don't need to.

I think xrp, btc, usd, eur, jpy, etc. will all be progressively replaced by more stable credit units such as the indexes proposed. Anyone can define a new index. E.C. Riegel predicted that private credit units would converge in something he called the valun, but I haven't finished any of his books yet and I can't give much detail on this. What I've read so far has greatly influenced me though.

[jl2012]

I don't have the details of ripple. However, based on the known info, it seems to have 2 fundamental problems:

1. double-spend. It seems ripple uses trust instead of mining to prevent double spend. Even if an IOU is issued by a trustworthy entity, people spending it may not. In contrast, in a colored-bitcoin scheme you only need to trust the IOU issuer, and the rest is protected by mining. If there is a trust-less and decentralized solution without any kind of proof-of-work or proof-or-stake, it would definitly be a bitcoin-killer (but I don't think this could happen).

2. Trust and anonymity are fundamentally incompatible concepts. Normally people won't trust an anonymous entity, especially for real money (the exceptions are anonymous services such as SilkRoad and TorWallet, which the users also demand anonymity).

-In real life banking, you won't get a credit card without showing all AML documents and proof of your salary. These sensitive personal information is kept by the bank and is (supposed) not to be disclosed.

-In bitcoin, which is decentralised, users have no choice but disclose their transactions to the world. On the other hand, mining makes bitcoin trust-less and user's identity is irrelevant. Therefore, bitcoin could be anonymous/pseudonymous.

-Ripple, however, is a decentraized web-of-trust system. This means all transactions have to be linked to entities in the real world. Who would like to let everyone know their  account balance? Even worse, imagine a transaction like this: Bob sells a HD5970 to Calvin for a sex IOU issued by Ann. Is it going to be permanently written in the blockchain and known by everyone forever?

[JoelKatz]

1. double-spend. It seems ripple uses trust instead of mining to prevent double spend. Even if an IOU is issued by a trustworthy entity, people spending it may not. In contrast, in a colored-bitcoin scheme you only need to trust the IOU issuer, and the rest is protected by mining. If there is a trust-less and decentralized solution without any kind of proof-of-work or proof-or-stake, it would definitly be a bitcoin-killer (but I don't think this could happen).

Think of a room full of people who all agree with each other. To enter the room, you must agree with them. To disagree with them, you must leave the room. They all sit in this room maintaining continuous agreement on everything. Each of them who is honest puts their first priority on enforcing the rules of the room, their second priority on maintaining agreement with everyone who is also willing to follow the rules, and their third priority on accepting legitimate transactions provided they don't violate the first two rules. The rules of the room make it infeasible to agree to a transaction once a conflicting transaction has been agreed to -- such an agreement cannot be formed and be valid according to the rules.

[jl2012]

1. double-spend. It seems ripple uses trust instead of mining to prevent double spend. Even if an IOU is issued by a trustworthy entity, people spending it may not. In contrast, in a colored-bitcoin scheme you only need to trust the IOU issuer, and the rest is protected by mining. If there is a trust-less and decentralized solution without any kind of proof-of-work or proof-or-stake, it would definitly be a bitcoin-killer (but I don't think this could happen).

Think of a room full of people who all agree with each other. To enter the room, you must agree with them. To disagree with them, you must leave the room. They all sit in this room maintaining continuous agreement on everything. Each of them who is honest puts their first priority on enforcing the rules of the room, their second priority on maintaining agreement with everyone who is also willing to follow the rules, and their third priority on accepting legitimate transactions provided they don't violate the first two rules. The rules of the room make it infeasible to agree to a transaction once a conflicting transaction has been agreed to -- such an agreement cannot be formed and be valid according to the rules.

So this is basically a proof-of-stake based on number of nodes and web-of-trust? i.e., all of my honest friends think this is not a double-spend, so this is not a double-spend. I seriously doubt if this could be at least as safe as proof-of-work of bitcoin. If it were, Satoshi would not have to implement proof-of-work. Obviously, an attacker could split the network (if not overwriting transactions) by controlling >51% of nodes and declaring the rest as dishonest. The only reason for abolishing mining I could think of is to allow the developers to collect transaction tax through selling Ripple Credit

How about my second point? I can illustrate by the following table:

Payment method	Anonymity	Traceable by unrelated parties
Gold, cash, pre-paid gift card	Yes	No
Credit card	No	No
Bitcoin	Yes	Yes
Ripple	No	Yes

In a creditor-debtor relationship, only the creditor could be anonymous. If the debtor is anonymous, the creditor will very likely get burnt (e.g. TorWallet). For cash and gift card, the holders are debtor so they could be anonymous. Gold and bitcoin are commodity and not debt, so they could be anonymous for anyone. On the other hand, credit card and ripple are based on credit so they could not be anonymous. (theoretically the debtor in ripple could be anonymous, but this seems not intended in the design)

Gold and cash are basically untraceable. There is transaction record for gift card and credit card but they are inaccessible to unrelated parties and are good enough for daily legal use. Bitcoin is decentralized and the record has to be traceable for everyone to prevent double-spend. This is not a major problem because bitcoin is anonymous. Ripple is the worst choice among all. Who would like to show their credit card bill to everyone, related and unrelated? Not me.

[JoelKatz]

Obviously, an attacker could split the network (if not overwriting transactions) by controlling >51% of nodes and declaring the rest as dishonest.

In any system, you can work out the easiest way for the system to betray its users, and then determine what resources it would take to do that and whether the payoff would be sufficient to justify the effort. A system will be safe provided it has the right margins between the cost to make the attack work, the benefit to the attacker of a successful attack, and the harm to the victims of the attack. Think about what would happen if someone who wanted to hurt Bitcoin managed to collect 51% of the mining power. With explicit trust, it's just as hard to accumulate 51%, but everyone else can just stop trusting all the entities they see cooperating in the attack, and the attacker has to start over from scratch.

[TheButterZone]

So I have a ripple account. rME4iXc1wzG47nbFd8yZ71n6qxrGmnpARE
Yay?

[nethead]

Created one wallet for myself too, rwZ1LnRGDxkKUEKhGu7hYhmas2sapWMEjP any good guy out there? thnx

[jjiimm_64]

Created one wallet for myself too, rwZ1LnRGDxkKUEKhGu7hYhmas2sapWMEjP any good guy out there? thnx

im good.. and have an account...

should i 'trust' you ? 

[Monster Tent]

So is ripple a competitor or friend to bitcoin? Still having trouble getting my head around it.

If you mined all the bitcoins in the first block you would have XRP.

[markm]

Well maybe if their pre-mine does in fact cause people not to use XRP as a currency then bitcoin might still be useful, otherwise presumably it makes sense to ask why use bitcoin, with its huge overhead cost of electricity and circuitry for securing its network, when you can use XRP instead?

So maybe it comes down to whether the massive pre-mine makes it un-usable as a currency?

Maybe like i0coin was created as a zero-premine version of ixcoin there will be a r0pple once the source code is available, a zero-premine ripple?

-MarkM-

[nethead]

Created one wallet for myself too, rwZ1LnRGDxkKUEKhGu7hYhmas2sapWMEjP any good guy out there? thnx

im good.. and have an account...

should i 'trust' you ? 

i dont see why not to 'ripple-trust' me Thanx

[JoelKatz]

i dont see why not to 'ripple-trust' me Thanx

Just remember, if you extend $5 in trust to someone, they can wind up owing you $5. If you don't have a settlement agreement with them, that could mean that $5 you intended to be able to spend or cash out is now a worthless IOU. Trust in Ripple is a powerful thing.

[jtimon]

Well maybe if their pre-mine does in fact cause people not to use XRP as a currency then bitcoin might still be useful, otherwise presumably it makes sense to ask why use bitcoin, with its huge overhead cost of electricity and circuitry for securing its network, when you can use XRP instead?

That's a really interesting discussion. Does the ledger make proof of work obsolete? I don't think so. maaku, for example, compares proof of work with entropy in physics.
I just think it is more trust-less and will keep having its place. Probably no dominating though, as many of us would have thought.
I think xrp will be more widely used than btc, but will not make it disappear.

So maybe it comes down to whether the massive pre-mine makes it un-usable as a currency?

Maybe like i0coin was created as a zero-premine version of ixcoin there will be a r0pple once the source code is available, a zero-premine ripple?

Would you make people hash just to get the initial distribution out? I think Ben Laury proposed it for his mining-less minettes.

I agree that if they don't distribute in a reasonable manner they will be just forked with another initial issuance method, but I don't think mining is much reasonable despite how much p2p it is.
My point is that while proof of work will still be used as the base of a security model, it shouldn't be preferred method for issuing, since it is very wasteful.
I don't see a ripple fork using proof of work only for issuance if that's what you're proposing.

[markm]

Selling the initial coins is a form of proof of work requirement, since in general on the whole money of whatever kind tends to be regarded as a kind of proof of someone somewhere once having either worked or gotten lucky (inherited someon else's work, discovered a pile of gold in the ground or whatever).

I am not suggesting using bitcoin's proof of work type of approach. How to distribute coins in a way that causes each and every actual person or entity to have only a tiny tiny tiny fraction of the total is an interesting problem that seemingly has not yet been solved, at least by private entities. Maybe governments could do it by issuing it to everyone on their citizenship records but even then presumably all the alternate identities that spy movies show them issuing to their secret agents and such would cause at least some "unfairness"...

-MarkM-

[jancsika]

1. double-spend. It seems ripple uses trust instead of mining to prevent double spend. Even if an IOU is issued by a trustworthy entity, people spending it may not. In contrast, in a colored-bitcoin scheme you only need to trust the IOU issuer, and the rest is protected by mining. If there is a trust-less and decentralized solution without any kind of proof-of-work or proof-or-stake, it would definitly be a bitcoin-killer (but I don't think this could happen).

Think of a room full of people who all agree with each other. To enter the room, you must agree with them. To disagree with them, you must leave the room. They all sit in this room maintaining continuous agreement on everything. Each of them who is honest puts their first priority on enforcing the rules of the room, their second priority on maintaining agreement with everyone who is also willing to follow the rules, and their third priority on accepting legitimate transactions provided they don't violate the first two rules. The rules of the room make it infeasible to agree to a transaction once a conflicting transaction has been agreed to -- such an agreement cannot be formed and be valid according to the rules.

But the room is only so big, there are many other rooms, and you need XRPs to connect them all together.  Since there is no built-in bootstrapping mechanism for distributing XRPs the workability of the system is questionable, and I'm having a hard time finding mention of a sensible approach to manual bootstrapping from any of the present room inhabitants.  Am I missing something?

As with Freicoin, it seems a step in the wrong direction to go from a working-- if flawed-- example of automated bootstrapping in Bitcoin to an undefined manual one somewhere in the future.

Btw-- wrt:
https://ripple.com/wiki/Distributed_exchange#How_does_Ripple_handle_privacy.3F

I'm not sure who wrote "2. Proxy payments" but the word "anonymize" needs to be removed from that paragraph.  A system where the recipient _and_ the third-party gateway can reveal the sender provides zero anonymity in any sense of the word.  Unless of course you're comfortable saying that using Facebook sometimes and LinkedIn other times anonymizes your online data profile.

[singpolyma]

The original ripple concept is very good, and I have been using it for quite some time (ripplepay.com) and have found it quite useful.

I'm still very skeptical of this new system.  Especially the things talked about in this thread.  If XRP are anti-spam, they should be invisible to the user (or as close to invisible as possible).

Also, they list as "advanced" the trust network, which is the whole point of the original system.