*First how can a centralized institution ever be secure? We have seen the problems that bitcoin has encountered and watched bitinstant, liberty reserve and Mt Gox all cave under the regulatory pressures from the US government. What would make ripple any different? It is all in one spot if they wanted to shut you down it wouldnt be much of a problem they just show up at your office and pull the plug.
That won't do anything. The software is out there. Right now, we do run all the validators that people use, but if we disappeared, others would do so. One of our top priorities now is to distribute the set of validators and set up an infrastructure to make that self-regulating and decentralized.
*How can we trust Ripple? You own the servers and issue the currency. How could we ever know that there is not a backdoor that would allow the dev. to create currency at will?
Every ledger is signed by every validator every few seconds. Every ledger includes a tree that justifies any changes in the main portion of the ledger. If someone's XRP balance increases, there must be a metadata entry justifying that change, or everyone in the world has proof Ripple has, through bug, subterfuge, or glitch, violated the rules.
Every ledger has two halves, a state half and a change half. Any changes to the state half (other than trivial changes to indexing and so on) must be justified by a signed transaction in the change half. If not, everyone will have proof that Ripple violated its invariants somehow. Any change that "disadvantages" someone must be justified by a transaction they signed. Any increase in XRP must be justified by a matching decrease (there is no way to create additional XRP beyond what exists in the genesis ledger). And so on.
We had to design the system so that people could trust it even after it was decentralized. We have no secrets. The source code is available. If we got anything wrong, we'll do our best to fix it.
*Why cant you import trust? One of the most aggravating things for me when i decided to join the bitcoin community is that no one would look at outside factors in gauging my trustworthiness. The ass hats in OTC gave me an insanely hard time and wouldnt accept any information that I provided to support my reputation. The best indication of future behavior is past behavior. If you want to build a trust network then people should be able to import trust from other sites. I trust someone who has 5000 online ebay sales with 100 percent positive feedback. Why couldnt you import that trust and let people choose to accept or deny it?
Speaking for myself personally, I think community/personal credit may be Ripple's killer app over the long term. But we don't quite understand how to manage it yet. Hopefully the community will help us figure out the best way to do this.
*Why dont you offer ID verification? Someones willingness to Id goes a long way in establishing their credibility. Anonymity and trustworthiness do not go together
That is definitely planned. We're working on a decentralized ID verification scheme.
*Isnt the only real benefit to ripple over the trust system here on bitcoin talk is that it allows you to borrow from people who trust people that you trust?
No. Ripple has many other benefits, such as direct access to market makers for cross-currency payments and the ability to shift balances without having to go to or through the issuer.
*You have said that the problem with ripple at the moment is the same problem BTC has in that it is very difficult to get fiat in and out of the system, Why? If it is a system based on trust why wouldnt you let people import any kinds of funds they like. Why not let people import debit card, credit card and PP funds? Label the type of funds and let people choose if they are willing to transact for them?
We'd love for people to do those things! Anyone can introduce arbitrary assets onto the Ripple network and everybody gets to choose which assets they consider valuable. That's what it's for.
*Who owns it and what are their motives? What is the mission statement?
I'm not sure what you're asking. If you mean the Ripple protocol, nobody. If you mean the Ripple network, all the participants own their respective devices. We have no desire to control or own the protocol or the network.
*Dont you think that instead of using ripple if you let each user have their own currency the system would work much better? For instance I would have Chris North coins and You would have a Joel Katz coins and based on your assets and credibility the valuation would change? That way instead of blindly trusting people that the people I trust trust, instead there would transparency. The way that is set up now doesnt take into account that some people are a better judge of credibility than others. I dont want to trust people just because you do you might not be any good at assessing trustworthiness.
That's what Ripple does. Anyone can issue an asset. Anyone can agree to accept any asset they want. The whole point of Ripple is to make payments work *without* any transitive trust.
Let's say you have a bank and I have a bank. You trust your bank to hold you money. I trust my bank to hold my money. If I want to pay you $50, I write you a check for $50. You don't trust me or my bank, but because that check allows your bank to owe you $50 more, you consider me to have paid you $50. You don't trust anyone but your bank. I don't trust anyone but mine. In the middle, either people who trust both banks, someone who is willing to trade dollars for XRP, or some other path makes the payment work. That's Ripple's big idea.
*My goal with digital currency is to defund the governments of the world, I have lost faith in the idea of bitcoin because i dont see any real advantages that it offers that will appeal to the masses. I realize it has some benefits but the average person is not gonna go out and start using coins. They dont know or care about the monetary system. The reasons to use bitcoin is not important to the average person. For it to gain widespread adoption it has to be better than what is already in place and it simply isn't and I dont really see how it can be. How can ripple change that?
One big advantage is that it gives people currency choice. If Ripple takes over the world, you can get paid in local currency and receive dollars. When you buy groceries, you can spend dollars and the grocer receives local currency. That means you don't hold local currency, so your government can't inflate it our from under you. Don't like dollars? Hold gold. Like Bitcoins? Hold them.
*If someone is my trust network establishes a lot of trust then borrows from everyone in the network and cuts and runs can I lose out?
No, you can only lose out if someone you choose to trust defaults on you for an amount equal to or less than the amount you trusted them to hold on your behalf. Payment paths only exist instantaneously while a payment is made. After that, there are only balances on trust lines that people have specifically chosen to create.
- OpenCoin unilaterally changed account reserve requirements.