
Ripple is officially open source - npongratz
https://ripple.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=3718&p=18013#p18013
======
Sidnicious
For anyone who doesn't grok Ripple, I looked into it a bunch a while back.
(Feel free to correct me on any of this.)

The Ripple network works a lot like the Bitcoin network: units of value can be
stored at a wallet address, and whoever owns the wallet's private key can send
funds to other wallets. The big difference is that while Ripple does have its
own, internal currency (XRP, which right now is used mainly to pay transaction
fees to the network), you can also send ”IOUs“ — units of value issued by some
third party.

So, some party might take USD (could be your bank, or a third party like
PayPal or Stripe), Bitcoin (could be your favorite Bitcoin exchange), Euros,
etc., hold them, and issue IOU to your Ripple wallet. So you give $100 USD to
PayPal, they send an IOU worth $100 PayPal USD to your Ripple wallet (signed
by them and stored in the Ripple blockchain).

You can send all/part of that PayPal-issued $100 to anyone else via Ripple,
just like you'd send XRP. Whoever wants to can redeem them for USD at PayPal —
you just deposit it into a special Ripple address that PayPal gives you and,
boom, the money shows up in your PayPal account (because PayPal was holding it
all along).

Here's where it gets even cooler. The Ripple protocol includes an “order book”
where you can trade currencies. So, if I'm buying something online and use
Euros and the company I'm paying uses USD, my Ripple client could
automatically get an IOU for x Deutsche Bank EUR (from my bank), trade it on
the Ripple network at the current exchange rate for y Bank of America USD (the
seller's bank), and then pay them via Ripple in USD that they can deposit
straight into their bank account!

Eventually most transactions might be done in straight XRP so we save on
transaction fees (from trading).

That's the plan anyway, as I understand it. Ripple ain't there yet. But, there
_are_ companies out there right now that issue IOUs in a few currencies and
are trusted enough that people might accept them for payment. So I’m pretty
excited.

~~~
gwern
It is cool, but the irony is, the IOU stuff will soon be mimicked by Bitcoin
with 'colored coins', and Ripple will lose the last major feature it had over
Bitcoin. And at that point - who wants a pre-mined backdoored e-currency which
can't be made anonymous or used places like Silk Road?

~~~
nowarninglabel
Legitimate businesses. We had a great conversation the other day at this
Virtual Currency Talk:
[http://cr.perkinscoie.com/rff/ff00120bf2ac2fdfe524c63378439a...](http://cr.perkinscoie.com/rff/ff00120bf2ac2fdfe524c63378439ae3cd97be08)
about the reputational risk of Bitcoin. There is a need to legimatize Bitcoin
with governments or use a virtual currency that is able to establish
legitimacy, so that large businesses which only have a marginal gain from
incorporating Bitcoin will actually have an incentive to do so.

Furthermore, there was a very strong consensus among all parties, most
especially by Patrick Murck (President, Bitcoin Foundation) that Bitcoin is
not an anonymous or "private" currency, and that many people who believe it
can be made anonymous are most likely in store for a rude awakening when
government scrutiny and regulation catches up with the pace of the technology.

~~~
gwern
> There is a need to legimatize Bitcoin with governments or use a virtual
> currency that is able to establish legitimacy, so that large businesses
> which only have a marginal gain from incorporating Bitcoin will actually
> have an incentive to do so.

The reputational issue is solved by widespread real-world use, which is not
something Ripple can boast either. These 'large businesses' have no reason to
use Ripple even if it's clean due to backdooring, if no one else is using it.

> Furthermore, there was a very strong consensus among all parties, most
> especially by Patrick Murck (President, Bitcoin Foundation) that Bitcoin is
> not an anonymous or "private" currency

I would be fascinated to hear if this means that Murck and the Foundation plan
to sabotage the adoption of any Zerocoin-like extension...?

------
rxl
Ripple has several huge problems that will prevent it from gaining as much
steam as other cryptocurrencies.

First, OpenCoin pre-mined the XRP's so they could hack the cryptocurrency
trend and make tons of money if their currency took off.

Second, Ripple is NOT a decentralized currency, but in fact a "distributed"
currency, which is actually a much bigger deal than you might think. This
means it has a single point of failure, can be easily abused by the creators,
and is extremely vulnerable to intervention by governments and other big
players.

(You can read all about it here:
[http://ripplescam.org/](http://ripplescam.org/))

Bottom line: the strength of a currency depends almost entirely on the trust
in that currency, and I have no reason whatsoever to place trust in ripples.
It's a wiser move to put your money in a non-scam currency, like Bitcoin or
Litecoin.

~~~
kylebrown
First it was bitcoin being decried as a "scam currency". Then bitcoiners
called litecoin a "pump n dump" alt-chain. Now its BTC and LTC promoters
campaigning against Ripple. Quite interesting...

~~~
rxl
Bitcoin, Litecoin, Feathercoin, etc. are all decentralized currencies, and
this fact should give you at least one very good reason to trust them.

Ripple has been pre-mined and is not decentralized, but in fact controlled by
one entity (regardless of what the creators may claim).

There is a huge difference here. Not even a comparison.

~~~
kylebrown
The main thing which makes bitcoin decentralized is that there's no central
authority which can seize your coins. Its the same with Ripple, XRP at a
ripple address cannot be seized or moved (without the private key for that
address).

Issues of coin distribution and mining versus no mining is a separate concern.
From my vantage point, the great majority of LTC belong to Litecoin
founders/investors/miners while the great majority of XRP belong to Ripple
founders/investors/gateway-partners. There are trade-offs with either
distribution scheme, but "coins to miners" is just one scheme (not the
defining criteria for decentralization).

------
neur0mancer
If you are wondering "what is Ripple?" Wikipedia's definition[1] is the best:

"Ripple is an open-source protocol for a payment network. In its developed
form, the Ripple network is intended to be a peer-to-peer distributed social
network service with a monetary honour system based on trust that already
exists between people in real-world social networks"

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ripple_monetary_system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ripple_monetary_system)

~~~
nullc
Careful what you read about ripple. A yearish ago some business people bought
the ripple name from the academic who was working on it, and built something
almost but not quite completely different under the same name. Anything
written about the old system probably doesn't apply to the new one.

~~~
SJoelKatz
That description kind of fits both classic Ripple and the new Ripple, but it
does fit classic Ripple better. The new Ripple does fully support
social/community credit. But it's targeted more, at least for the near future,
at acting as a payment system.

------
npongratz
Code repo here:

[https://github.com/ripple/rippled/](https://github.com/ripple/rippled/)

Bitcoin Magazine writes about the announcement here:

[http://bitcoinmagazine.com/7275/ripple-is-officially-open-
so...](http://bitcoinmagazine.com/7275/ripple-is-officially-open-source/)

------
dllthomas
I love the very basic premise of ripple - route payment in trust networks,
P2P. I am more skeptical of the particular implementation, and especially the
"pre-mined currency needed for transactions" bit, but after some thought and
discussion don't _think_ it's as big a problem as I worried (though I'm still
not quite confident in that). In any event, open sourcing the server software
is a good thing.

~~~
simlevesque
Will you do something about it ? Personally, thinking about the possibilities
of the network and the protocol makes me eager to develop software that use
it.

I feel like someday everybody will have a ripple account but they won't know
it. Ripple is interesting because it is transparent and fast enough to enable
developpers to create the future of everything around money.

~~~
dllthomas
I'm not sure exactly what you're asking.

------
glitch003
When will the creators of Ripple explain why they've premined all the Ripples
and kept most of them for themselves?

~~~
thisiswrong
I have been following the progression of Ripple for some time. But I also get
the feeling that Ripple is a huge pyramid scheme. To quote the 2 main
criticisms from Wikipedia:

1\. Ripple Labs will hold half of all the XRP in existence, in the hope that
they will gain value

2\. Ripple Labs have repeatedly made claims that they would give away 50
billion Ripples (XRP), but have not done so.

So rather than reward early adopters of the currently (with future deflation),
like Bitcoin did, Ripple Labs will hold onto 80 billion XRP in hope that its
value will increase.

Source:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ripple_monetary_system](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ripple_monetary_system)

~~~
SJoelKatz
Either the value of the currency will increase or it won't. If it won't
increase, then Ripple Labs will have no reward. If it will increase, then
early adopters who buy and hold XRP will be rewarded.

Say Ripple Labs currently holds a chunk of XRP worth $X. Say by January, it
goes up to $Y. Then Ripple Labs will turn $X into $Y between now and January.
Except an early adopter who bought $X worth of XRP today would also turn $5X
into $Y over that same time frame.

The cost to buy Bitcoins is usually pretty close to the cost to mine them, so
Bitcoin early adopters didn't get their Bitcoins for free either. Using mining
to reward early adopters has proven to be economically infeasible. The cost
and reward of mining will adjust, as mining becomes profitable or
unprofitable, such that mining will not generally be more rewarding than
anything else people might do.

Bitcoin took a lot of criticism for rewarding early adopters. So this is
really a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" kind of thing.

------
teeja
Ah, darnit. I thought you meant the wine.

~~~
teeja
Sorry, I forgot this isn't _really_ a forum full of hackers. Just news _about_
hackers. I'll remember not to comment without wearing my tie.

------
lnanek2
Thought this was going to be about the Ripple emulator used for making Chrome
act like a device while you are working on PhoneGap apps. I think that was
open source anyway, but it is always way behind the current PhoneGap version
and buggy, so it would have been nice if it merged with PhoneGap, excuse me,
Cordova or whatever, and was going to be better supported...

Never heard of this Ripple and don't care anything about it myself.

~~~
weland
> Thought this was going to be about the Ripple emulator used for making
> Chrome act like a device while you are working on PhoneGap apps.

Nope, it's about a program which satisfies a legitimate technological need.
Sorry you were disappointed.

