Topic: XRP distribution proposal: the paying faucet (Read 8877 times)

rJnVRKshXf6vwBFt4WC5X92LwQSatvGm49


can somebody help me get started on ripple i have 0 and wanted to use the exchange.

This will never happen.

rJnVRKshXf6vwBFt4WC5X92LwQSatvGm49

from the horse's mouth 


lol   

You'd accept IOUs for three reasons:

1. The payer may not have XRP, since those are in finite supply and take effort to acquire.

2. XRP, like BTC, isn't be a great unit of account, since its value hasn't stabilized yet.  Unless you want to constantly be keeping an eye on the current XRP price and doing conversions back to more stable units, like dollars, or better yet, something like Terras, in your head.

3. You are unhappy that a small group controls the majority of XRP and you'd rather not use it for payments.

If this is the only problem, it's a technical one and we could imagine plenty of solutions. Let's assume that we have a faucet that prevent abuse (at least enough to make it anecdotical)

Did you miss the Captcha part? unless you have created a De-Captcha algorithm that is 100% effective, the Faucet will work. 

What OpenCoin are doing/have done (with some degree of success) is move the discussion to HOW to fairly distribute XRP.  In fact, given they're happy to run a centralised system, there's no need for a block-chain or XRP at all - they could just manage the ledger on a private server.  PayPal (and other centralised services) have managed to do that without problems with spam.  Of course then they'd not be able to sell the Ripple concept so easily here - as it would be OPENLY centralised.

But they could promise to decentralise it later without any detail of the plan for that.  They seem to think a vague promise to decentralise XRP supply is fine - so if the communty will accept a vague commitment on one promise to decentralise why wouldn't they accept a different vague promise (rhetorical question of course)?

XRPs have more liquidity than any IOUs. It is impossible to prevent someone from sending you XRPs. But it is possible not to take someone's IOUs. In fact the only way to receive an IOU is to first extend trust, and in sufficient quantities. XRPs have more liquidity than any IOUs.

Liquidity. It's very empowering when people can issue their own promises. Also, intelligent credit clearing in the network is a powerful feature. It's an elegant solution to the Greek Village problem.

Yep, that's exactly what OpenCoin wants people to do. But the usefulness of XRP as a currency so completely eclipses the IOU feature that it almost makes it insignificant.

Let me ask you a question: why would you accept someone's IOUs instead of XRPs?

I'd also say people should not focus too much on these XRPs. The original concept of Ripple (it was conceived in 2004) is not about a built-in unit, but rather about peer-to-peer bartering and banking with any currency, even Ithaca Hours or whatever. Thus, this is not OpenCoin propaganda.

These XRPs seem to be a technical necessity for the current implementation of Ripple. As long as they solely function in a role as some kind of stamps, I wouldn't mind much if there is a little centralization to them. But if people hype it up into a proper, widespread currency, and if also the OpenCoin organization wants them to become more valuable, then it's indeed problematic.

I would be curious to hear about people from OpenCoin. Why are they so secret?

Yes, I'm saying that yes the faucet did help Bitcoin. But only because Bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency. Ripple doesn't need a faucet now, because Bitcoin has already created a community of people who are open minded to the concept of a digital currency.

The Bitcoin faucet is MUCH different than the giveaways of OpenCoin. Unlike the Bitcoin faucet, no one can "mine" XRPs. They are totally under the control of a handful of people. Some of these people are secret: OpenCoin, despite having the word "Open" as part of it's name, does not reveal who works for them or who is funding them.

Ripple would definitely be better if OpenCoin destroyed the 100 billion XRP they gave themselves and switched to a proof of work like Bitcoin. At that point, a faucet would certainly be helpful. But not in it's current incarnation.

I don't agree. One guy paid a pizza 15.000 BTC not further than 3 years ago. If he had keep them, he would now have 450k$, right? Not really. If he didn't spend those btc and nobody ever spent them, then the bitcoin we know today would not exist. The faucet was a *huge* helper and is not different at all from the giveaways of OpenCoin.

What was subtle about the faucet was that the value given was decreasing. When I used the faucet, I received 0.5 BTC. Then it became 0.05, etc. (I think it was even 5BTC at the start). The faucet was taking its money from donations from rich bitcoiners.

The situation is exactly the same here except that we have only one rich Rippler: OpenCoin.

You've been fooled by the OpenCoin propaganda. XRPs can be used for whatever people want to use them for. Right now:

- You can send and receive XRPs between anyone else without incurring any gateway fees
- Only 100 billion XRPs can ever exist
- XRPs are divisble down to many decimal places

XRPs have all of the qualities of a currency.


It would "work" but then anyone could spam the network with transactions, effectively creating a denial of service. In order to discourage spam, transactions have to have a cost associated with them. For efficiency and performance reasons, the cost needs to be paid in a currency that is also transmitted by the Ripple network. For economic reasons, this currency needs to have some non-trivial value. It must be expensive enough to make spamming costly.

So no, Ripple cannot work without the XRP concept. The problem with XRPs is that they are the worst sort of pre-mine.

That's indeed a valid point that should be said more. In fact, would Ripple work without XRP at all?

XRP's are not 100% of the Ripple economy its more like 0.1% or maybe even less.  The economy of Ripple is based on the IOU's bought from trusted Gateways like BITSTAMP.  XRP's are for paying tx fees only, while yes I agree they should get as many XRP as possible into users hands but Ripple still has very few users beyond members of this forum.

A faucet is a total non starter. Anyone with Tor and a script could continually pump out new Ripple addresses and connect from different IPs, to loot the faucet.

The only reason that the faucet marginally worked with Bitcoin is because Bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency and people didn't quite understand how big it would get. Now that Bitcoin has won the hearts and minds, there will be a million greedy mouths trying to suck at the Ripple faucet for a second chance at "get rich quick."

Interesting lead.

The thing is, if people object to mining because it wastes electricity, they should object even more to having to fill out a CAPTCHA. Or if they don't, how about CAPTCHA-based mining? The problem with CAPTCHA is it is not an objective PoW unless audited by someone (in which case it is even more wasteful) or unless OpenCoin knows all the solutions in advance (which is unfair as they could automatically collect the dough).

To me the elephant in the room is that equitable distribution has been a problem for a long time, and it only finally found a solution in the form of PoW. PoW was a game-changer precisely because it was the only system to solve yhis hard problem of how to fairly divvy up currency units.  Barring another ingenious breakthrough as big as PoW, there's no reason to expect that anything besides PoW will be suitable for the task of distributing XRP.

OpenCoin calls this a hard problem and asks for suggestion on how to overcome it. Well unless someone can make that next big breakthrough, the only answer available is PoW. It seems to me very strange that anyone in the Bitcoin community wouldn't understand this. With the current level of technology, spending electricity is simply the price that must be paid to effect fair distribution. If that is unacceptable, the project will probably have to be reconsidered in some fundamental ways.