Re: Interledger RFCs, ILP Packet, and Ledger Plugin Interface

On 1 June 2016 at 00:22, Evan Schwartz <evan@ripple.com> wrote:

> I want call your attention to the Interledger RFCs repo
> <https://github.com/interledger/rfcs>, and to three of the documents in
> particular. These reflect the latest ideas, which includes some new
> developments that clarify the structure of Interledger and make the analogy
> between Interledger and the internet protocols even stronger.
>
>    - IL-RFC-1: Interledger Architecture
>    <https://github.com/interledger/rfcs/blob/master/0001-interledger-architecture/0001-interledger-architecture.md>
>    This provides an overview of how the protocols in the Interledger
>    suite fit together and may be useful for answering the question "so what
>    *is* interledger?" (the whitepaper is more a theoretical defense of
>    the concepts underpinning interledger, rather than a description of the
>    components and how they work)
>    - IL-RFC-3: Interledger Protocol
>    <https://github.com/interledger/rfcs/blob/master/0003-interledger-protocol/0003-interledger-protocol.md>
>    This spec describes the ILP Packet format (a new and important
>    concept), which is heavily inspired by IP packets. Notably, it only
>    includes the destination address, destination amount and a nextHeader field
>    for adding additional headers (inspired by IPv6's extension format). It
>    does not include conditions, because we realized those actually fit into
>    "transport layer" protocols such as Universal and Atomic.
>    - IL-RFC-4: Ledger Plugin Interface
>    <https://github.com/interledger/rfcs/blob/master/0004-ledger-plugin-interface/0004-ledger-plugin-interface.md>
>    This is the Interledger protocol, right? So it's time for us to be
>    able to support other types of ledgers. This spec defines the abstraction
>    layer we will use to enable Interledger payments over new ledger types
>    (Bitcoin, Ethereum, BigchainDB, etc). We'll be refactoring the
>    five-bells-sender and -connector to use this interface. The goal is to make
>    supporting new ledgers as easy as writing a library that defines these
>    functions and plugging it in to the existing client and connector code
>    bases.
>
> As the name suggests, these are requests for comments, so comment away!
>
> These are all still drafts (and the other specs in the repo are just
> placeholders for now) but we're excited about these developments and
> realizations so we wanted to make sure you saw them.
>

Great job on the modularity.

Question:  why should a ledger contain only one type of currency?  In my
wallets the ledgers can contain multiple currencies.  Perhaps this is just
a naming issue.


>
> --
> Evan Schwartz | Software Architect | Ripple
> [image: ripple.com] <http://ripple.com>
>