Topic: ripple: let's test it! - page 30. (Read 43925 times)

If you are a member of a gateway, exploring its options might pay off in interesting discoveries, and if not, it might at least help get an idea of what options it offers. For example I can easily imagine that some gateways might use different terminology for "depositing" stuff than they use for "redeeming" their own IOUs. Who knows? I'd be interested whether gateways exhibit such quirks. Or any quirks, actually.

-MarkM-

So, does anyone want to buy/sell BTC 0.01 (blockchain vs. ripple) with me? I would like to test sending Bitcoin via ripple.

ok, screw it. I tried sending BTC 0.01 to lebing. It failed in the same way as before with bitinstant. "Your transaction failed to clear, reason: Missing/inapplicable prior transaction."

If this was an answer to my ealier "bug report" (the one with the screenshots), then: ok, no problem.

It could however also be possible that for some systemic reason I cannot deposit the bitstamp IOU to my bitstamp wallet... should that be possible or not.

In other words: is it a bug or a feature?

Ripple is currently in Open Beta, which is geekspeak for might not always work quite exactly as intended.

Tonight when I logged into my copy of the client*, located on my hard drive, using a file: URL ( e.g. file:///usr/src/ripple/rippleclient-git/index.html ), imagine my shock to find all my XRP and BTC were not belong to me!

I fired the thing up again, and voila, all my mine are belong to me again!


* Built by me, by following the instructions git pulled to me along with the client source code.

-MarkM-

someone today told me this:

ok, I'll try depositing some of the BTC back to my bitinstant wallet... bitinstant tells me a deposit link:

rvYAfWj5gh67oV6fW32ZzP3Aw4Eubs59B?dt=3289

I see. As a gateway should only have one address there needs to be some identifier to identify the (traditional banking, i.e. bitinstant wallet) account to be credited.

so, let's do it...



ooops:



anyone have an explanation?

Oh cool, you have trusted bitstamp's bitcoin IOUs, I have trusted WeEx's bitcoin IOUs. I wonder if they trust each other?

On the one hand I would by default expect not, simply because gateways are not commonly regarded as being in the business of trusting people, so why would they trust another company, especially a company that could even be imagined to be in some way "a competitor"? Companies are made up of people, and trusting people is not what the business is typically assumed to be about.

Sticking to a "we are here to be trusted, not to trust" model a gateway would, instead, let its users handle all the "trusting someone other than yourself" stuff.

You'd want to have users who trust other gateways, and, furthermore, who are willing to exchange your IOUs for the IOUs of other gateways.

Exploitative much? Darn right! The Rules of Aquisition tell us that "exploitation begins at home", but it sure does not end there! Business is all about exploitation!

As a gateway, operating a nice clean pure "trust no other" model, the only IOUs you'd accept would be your own. Anyone else's your users can accept if they choose, and the more of them that do the better for you maybe, as their trust networks are opened to you by the fact that they have chosen to trust you (and only to the actual extent/value that they have chosen to trust you).

This early in the open beta of Ripple however, I suspect it might happen to be the case that these two "only known offically recognised as gateways gateways" might have been talked into trusting each other, if only a little, if only until they can get users trusting them who can take on some of the opportunities presented by the possibility that someone somewhere sometime might want to trade one gateway's IOUs for the other gateway's IOUs.

I hope the word "opportunities" caused some users' and potential-users' ears to perk up, because it is a very nice marketing-word with a long history of being useful in talking users into taking part in doing things on the internet (and even off the internet, to tell the truth)...

-MarkM-

yes, I own an IOU from bitstamp. This is also shown in my balance (I now have 0.5 BTC in my ripple wallet). My bistamp wallet of course doesn't show those .5 BTC any more (I made a withdrawal to my ripple wallet... resulting in me owning the IOU)

I'm not sure what you mean by "they don't have to account for that".

I also managed to get .5 btc onto Ripple via Bitstamp. It shows as being sent to me in my history but doesn't show in my balance. I'm still able to submit an order to sell BTC.

I just tried to buy some btc from you with xrp. Now what? : )

Ok let me try and understand this, so you own an IOU from bitstamp cause you sent them .5 btc and then withdraw it your ripple account? Letting bitstamp know that they don't have to account for that .5 bitcoin cause you opted to make an IOU?

I don't get it guys, please enlighten me. When i was reading about ripple and how it works, in my mind, in a lot of cases i could easily exchange word "Ripple" with word "Bitcoin" or "XRP" with "BTC".

What am i missing?

I initially thought ripple was about loan business somehow.

Now I think it's more about tracking who owes whom how many whats (isn't that what money is all about?)

ah, nice. I can see some trust I put into bitstamp was used up (because I own an IOU from them worth 0.5 BTC):

Today, with Ripple, you can receive Rpples (international currency symbol: XRP) if someone chooses to send you some and knows your Ripple account number.

Today, with Ripple, if you have enough Ripples (XRP) in your Ripple account to meet the "reserve requirements" imposed by the various options / services your Ripple account is using plus some XRP left over after meeting those "reserve requirements", you can, if you know someone's Ripple account number, send them some Ripples.

Having an account at all requires 200 XRP of "reserve", so if you have only 200 or less XRP in your Ripple account sorry, sending Ripples is not for you until you bring your Ripple account's XRP balance up over 200.

If you have set up a line of trust, each line of trust requires 50 XRP of reserve too, so if you have done that and have only 250 or less XRP in your account sending Ripples is, again, not for you until you bring your account's XRP balance up over 250 (or however much the account's reserve requirement adds up to given the number of lines of trust, market offers, and so on, you have set up).

Today, with Ripple, what you can do is limited, as an anti spam, anti overuse/abuse measure, by your supply/balance of Ripples.

-MarkM-

So, on with aspects of being a [service provider of some kind] on the Ripple network:

Things one can start getting into place while waiting for rippled source code:

Cold wallet(s)!

A core component of my Open Transactions server enterprise that my Ripple-side enterprise will also be needing.

I like to run token-issuing, which Ripple, on the Ripple side, calls IOU-issuing, as a 100% reserve operation.

Thus before I issue any tokens aka IOUs, I like to secure, securely, actual real on the blockchain coins before getting into the issuing of any tokens representing such coins.

My mention of a cold storage operator type of enterprise earlier was because I like to differentiate hot wallet services from cold wallet services.

For one thing, that lets me build enterprises modularly. Nothing need go in hot or out hot from cold storage. Cold storage is very cold.

Ideally, what goes into cold storage stays there for as long as the type (denomination) of tokens (aka IOUs) that are to represent it seem likely to be of use. They should not need to come back out of cold storage until no further/future need for such tokens is expected/anticipated.

Hot wallet(s):

A hot wallet operation is the part of the enterprise that sends and receives coins on the blockchain side and which will, once rippled is running and the other steps that await a running rippled are done, possibly be exposed to the world via a web app. Ouch, yes, a web app. Danger, Will Robinson, Danger!

Since coins in the hot wallet operation will thus be exposed to the entire internet of hackers, obviously it would be irresponsible of me to put there, thus put at risk, any part of the cold-stored (ice cold, frozen, maybe buried in a Fortress of Solitude in the arctic or antarctic) 100% backing that backs issued tokens-aka-IOUs.

The coins in the "hot wallet" operation could vanish at any moment, thanks to the ingenuity of the entire internet of hackers.

No way do I want to be in the position of having issued an Open Trsnsactions token (on the Open Transactions side), nor a Ripple IOU (on the Ripple side) representing (backed by) any of those coins...

-MarkM-

added you folks who posted their addresses in this thread so far

lebin, Mageant, gweedo, Severian, molecular

gave you some trust also

my address is

rUdPvX9YN1NwyniwiJeSW6y3YKZL84gsB6

Oh good sleuthing, I hadn't ferreted out that URL, all I knew of was the "coming soon" placeholder public repo.

-MarkM-

I would love to run a rippled myself (even if it's only to support the network), but it seems the code is behind bars:

From bitstamp:

RIPPLE PAYMENT
RIPPLE IS CURRENTY DISABLED. PLEASE TRY LATER.

Bummer.

That is probably more a political than a technical question: "Will others let you use their rippled to run your gateway?"

(How heavy usage, consuming how much of their power, and all that stuff.)

You pretty much ought to run your own, and there are commands you will want to send that include your account's secret so if you use someone else's you get into it being wise to sign the commands on your side instead of letting the server know your secret so it can sign your commands on your behalf.

Me I plan to wait until I have a rippled right here behind my steel plated door with me, so I can go ahead and not try to code or find some way of signing the commands before sending them to a rippled. But thats just me. I'm a bitcoiner. Bitcoiners don't hand out private keys (aka secrets) to third parties. Right?

-MarkM-