Proposal for "eCash" Ripple fork - your opinion needed

[morningtime]

Hi,

I've been following the recent fallout happening over at Ripple. The original founder of Ripple, Jed McCaleb, is threatening to dump his 9 billion XRP stash, which could clear the entire orderbook. It appears to be a threat to force the other founders, now CEO Chris Larsen and Arthur Brito, to return their ~11 billion to the OpenCoin foundation responsible for distributing the remaining 80 billion or so.

Not only has Jed left Ripple to work on his "secret Bitcoin project", Kraken CEO Jesse Powell has also left the Ripple board as of yesterday.

Jesse left an interesting comment at Reddit,
http://www.reddit.com/r/Ripple/comments/26ccz3/ripple_board_member_resigns/chpwhbs

With the Ripple being open source, he wonders why there hasn't been a Ripple fork yet. Jesse jokes about a Dogecoin Ripple fork, which, if equally popular, could kill Ripple. The point is that anyone can start a company like Ripple.

Ripple can be divided into two camps, as best described in another Reddit comment,
http://www.reddit.com/r/Ripple/comments/26ccz3/ripple_board_member_resigns/chpxxbr

Camp 1: A bottom-up approach: "Everybody can be their own little bank in their own little community." - a digital Hawala system, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawala
Camp 2: A top-down approach: "Let's get banks on board so many people can use Ripple right away." - SWIFT 2.0

Ripple's leadership is pursuing the top-down approach to sign up financial institutions like German Fidor AG. But Ripple's inventor, Ryan Fugger, preferred a grassroots bottom-up approach, but failed to gain momentum. http://www.reddit.com/r/Ripple/comments/26ccz3/ripple_board_member_resigns/chpuhok

Is now the right time to attempt the original Ripple idea? How does the Bitcoin community feel about bootstrapping a bottom-up Ripple fork, with fairly distributed coin. Me and my co-founder working at eCash in Amsterdam might consider pitching such an idea to investors in Europe. We would call it eCash. ("eCash" was originally invented in Amsterdam by David Chaum, visionary cryptographer. )

However, my most urgent concern is whether the Ethereum protocol is already superior to Ripple, or not? And where does PaySwarm by Manu Sporny from the W3C organization fit in? https://web-payments.org/

[crazywack]

What about emunie? even though their coin seems to be loosing its steam due to constant delays, wouldn't it be much like a ripple?

[Sukrim]

However, my most urgent concern is whether the Ethereum protocol is already superior to Ripple, or not?

Just compare their code bases... oh wait, Ethereum is at the moment completely and utterly vaporware! It is easy to promise a lot, let's see what they will actually release.

My usual question about generating altcoins (which your Ripple based eCash would be) that are distributed fairly: How would you do that? Proof of Work? Trust in a central instance (e.g. show your government passport to claim 1000 coins)? Selling them at fixed rates, thus "premining" again?

[Zer0Sum]

What about emunie? even though their coin seems to be loosing its steam due to constant delays, wouldn't it be much like a ripple?

emunie is DOA.

They were just too elitist like Ripple...
And they invented bizarre terminology like "hatching" zygotes of whatever...
Maybe they even had hoards of "sperm" swimming through "canals" to fertilize "eggs"...
Count me out, baby. 

[voluntarist500]

forget it. Just buy btc.