Re: Ripple

On 11/15/2013 01:48 PM, Kumar McMillan wrote:
> I agree. Ripple's model seems to be too centralized. It's
> distributed not decentralized.

I don't understand what you mean by that, Kumar. Can you elaborate?
Which part of the Ripple system are you alluding to?

> Also, as I understand it, Ripple is reserving some currency for
> itself which seems to give them (as a corporate entity) an unfair
> advantage.

For the members of this group that haven't taken a good long look at
Ripple, I suggest you do so. We may want to have the Ripple Labs folks
give an overview of Ripple and get this community to ask questions about
the protocol. There seems to be a fairly large gap between the
understanding that this group has and the reality of what Ripple Labs
has created.

It's solid work as far as I can tell (with the caveat that I haven't
been able to review the source code yet or any of the algorithmic
details). At one time I did think that Ripple was a scam. However, I no
longer think so. They've been very above board about what they're trying
to do and the incentive structure they've created for doing so.

Their goal is to make worth something, that's why they've allocated a
large chunk to themselves. In order to make it worth something, they
have to make the network worth something. If Ripple takes off, XRP
becomes worth hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars, which
makes them very rich. The societal trade-off they've made is creating an
open, global monetary and foreign exchange system which is worth many
multiple times that based on current rates that banks charge for the
same services. If Ripple is successful, it's a win-win for global society.

We're lucky to have a few of the Ripple Labs technical team on this
mailing list, so please ask questions if you have them. They've always
answered them in a very transparent manner, as David Schwartz has
started to do earlier in this thread.

-- manu

-- 
Manu Sporny (skype: msporny, twitter: manusporny, G+: +Manu Sporny)
Founder/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
blog: Meritora - Web payments commercial launch
http://blog.meritora.com/launch/

Received on Sunday, 17 November 2013 20:39:12 UTC