i have to agree with OP altho i base this off the info gleaned from the Ripple website and haven't bothered to hunt for more detailed info.
i don't get the concept and the lack of granular detail MBigg is complaining about seems valid.
Topic: Ripple SOUNDS nice but there are some MAJOR problems - page 6. (Read 7072 times)
Yeah nice job stating the obvious. Bitcoin is also in beta and yet we know about every intricate detail.
It's in beta and so it isn't complete.
You should wait the release here: https://github.com/rippleFoundation/ripple
You should wait the release here: https://github.com/rippleFoundation/ripple
Looking over the documentation (https://ripple.com/wiki/) there is a lot of information about the protocol that is not explained. There is certainly nowhere nearly enough information to produce a competing implementation. A lot of important details are swept under the rug. For example, in "How it works", it is claimed that "Ledgers are really hash trees". No further explanation is given.
This nonsense is repeated all over the documentation, with promises that "mathematical proofs are coming soon." It is said that the ledger achieves consensus between decentralized nodes without proof of work (a bold claim) and yet, no step by step algorithm is provided. The closest it comes to anything resembling detail is that a transaction is either "passed", "soft failed", or "hard failed." With no other information provided. Answers to important questions, like how Ripple peers are discovered, the messages passed between nodes, who manages the central list of "unique nodes" (for every client's UNL) are totally missing.
The original Bitcoin paper from Satoshi was amazing. It provided enough algorithmic information to implement a baseline protocol yourself, and addressed almost every important issue that one might come up with when first exposed to Bitcoin. On the other hand, Ripple is almost completely opaque and comes to us not in the form of a rigorous paper but a deployed implementation that we are supposed to "just trust." Looking over the Ripple forum and reading some parts of the wiki, it seems that Ripple credits ("XRPs") are distributed by hand by the administrators of the system? In what way is this decentralized?
In the other Ripple thread, people are fawning over this rubbish like it's the second coming of Jesus. I suspect these are non technical individuals who have fallen in love with the idea (which is decent) but don't have any inkling of whether or not it can work at the technical level.
This nonsense is repeated all over the documentation, with promises that "mathematical proofs are coming soon." It is said that the ledger achieves consensus between decentralized nodes without proof of work (a bold claim) and yet, no step by step algorithm is provided. The closest it comes to anything resembling detail is that a transaction is either "passed", "soft failed", or "hard failed." With no other information provided. Answers to important questions, like how Ripple peers are discovered, the messages passed between nodes, who manages the central list of "unique nodes" (for every client's UNL) are totally missing.
The original Bitcoin paper from Satoshi was amazing. It provided enough algorithmic information to implement a baseline protocol yourself, and addressed almost every important issue that one might come up with when first exposed to Bitcoin. On the other hand, Ripple is almost completely opaque and comes to us not in the form of a rigorous paper but a deployed implementation that we are supposed to "just trust." Looking over the Ripple forum and reading some parts of the wiki, it seems that Ripple credits ("XRPs") are distributed by hand by the administrators of the system? In what way is this decentralized?
In the other Ripple thread, people are fawning over this rubbish like it's the second coming of Jesus. I suspect these are non technical individuals who have fallen in love with the idea (which is decent) but don't have any inkling of whether or not it can work at the technical level.
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