The protocol needs a native currency (XRP) in order to pay the anti-DDOS fee.
No, it doesn't. Have you seen the various pre-OpenCoin ripple protocols, or the currently competing colored coin proposals? None of them necessarily needed or would have benefited from a scarce-money fee currency. Ripple is a protocol for generating ad-hoc user-issued assets and arranging trade networks for exchanging these currencies. There's no reason fees can't be collected in whatever currency is being transacted, and then atomically converted into whatever currency the collecting node desires. That's what ripple is designed to do.
I wrote the earlier Ripple designs [1]. To me, the main thing XRP adds to the concept is a way of bootstrapping the network by providing a way to bridge the gap between islands of nodes with no trust pathway for monetary value to flow between them. I tried getting Ripple going for nearly 10 years (including a YC interview in 2007), and this bootstrapping issue was a big one.
XRP also provides anti-DDOS, which is also something you'd also need to consider carefully in implementing my original designs, as well as a brilliant way to finance the creation, development, and maintenance of the network.
To me, the main thing XRP adds to the concept is a way of bootstrapping the network by providing a way to bridge the gap between islands of nodes with no trust pathway for monetary value to flow between them
XRP adds nothing new to the bridging problem. Any other common currency could have been used, such as USD-backed assets or bitcoin. XRP was Jeb McCaleb's stab at Bitcoin 2.0, and the bridging issue simply a post-facto rationalization. In a world where there is already existing decentralized currencies, or multiple legacy options for a common currency, there is no need for yet another centrally issued scarce-money... except that OpenCoin stands to materially benefit from forcing XRP down our throats.
XRP also provides anti-DDOS...
It does so by economically limiting its own usefulness. Accounts and assets cost real money to create and maintain - more so than the fees involved with bitcoin. That brings us back to the traditional banking model of institutional asset issuers and heavyweight accounts, and rules out a number of protocols involving ephemeral asset issuance or privacy-enhancing one-time-use accounts.
I don't consider the problem solved if the "solution" involves restrictions that unnecessarily limit the capability of the system.
as well as a brilliant way to finance the creation, development, and maintenance of the network.
On this I could not disagree more. XRP is an unnatural, ill-fit hack on top of Ripple which provides no tangible benefit that could not be achieved by other less restrictive, and less obviously self-serving means. It therefore ads risk to anyone investing time or resources into using Ripple, as it may be surpassed by a superior fork which removes XRP.
Financing the creation of a new, distributed, peer-to-peer network is not easy, I know - it's been hard trying to get funds for Freimarkets. But the OpenCoin / Mastercoin / Bitshares model is not the way to do it, in my opinion. Rather the bitcoin model is: distributed issuance and make your money from the economy that develops, not an underhanded wealth transfer written into the protocol.
I have talked with many of the devs from Ripple that post on BitcoinTalk often, they are so adamant that the XRP is required I feel that it's a stealth currency.
One developer was paid, instead of stock a billion ripples. The first thing Opencoin/Ripplelabs did was giveaway very small amounts to create artificial scarcity and then open an exchange (through Bitstamp) to sell off as many as possible for Bitcoins. At the peak Ripples were worth more than all the Bitcoins in the world.
I remember Joel (I think) was adamant that Ripple was not a currency at all, except we ended getting him to admit it was meant to be a competing currency to Bitcoin.
I do not trust them at all, especially now Google are involved in backing them.
The fact is that you can't transact separate currencies which are on separate protocols, unless you represent one as an issued-asset on the other. Colored Coins use the native currency of its protocol - bitcoin. The developer of the first colored coins client, Stefan Thomas, moved on to become CTO of ripple. Ripple is a new protocol altogether, with advantages over extensions/overlays on the bitcoin protocol, the main ones being no mining and much quicker ledgers.
User-issued assets on ripple have a customizable transit fee which is effectively collected in the issued currency (since the fee is paid from the balance of the issue back to the issuer). For example, bitstamp's issuer fee is 0.2%, so any trades of bitstampBTC or bitstampUSD pay 0.2% of the amount back to bitstamp's issuer address. (the fee is set at creation of the issuing address and can't be changed later).
This is not true. There are mechanisms for cross-chain trade, and with a few small changes theres quite a bit more that you can do. See the smart contracts page of the wiki, and the freimarkets whitepaper for example.
Comments
No, it doesn't. Have you seen the various pre-OpenCoin ripple protocols, or the currently competing colored coin proposals? None of them necessarily needed or would have benefited from a scarce-money fee currency. Ripple is a protocol for generating ad-hoc user-issued assets and arranging trade networks for exchanging these currencies. There's no reason fees can't be collected in whatever currency is being transacted, and then atomically converted into whatever currency the collecting node desires. That's what ripple is designed to do.
I wrote the earlier Ripple designs [1]. To me, the main thing XRP adds to the concept is a way of bootstrapping the network by providing a way to bridge the gap between islands of nodes with no trust pathway for monetary value to flow between them. I tried getting Ripple going for nearly 10 years (including a YC interview in 2007), and this bootstrapping issue was a big one.
XRP also provides anti-DDOS, which is also something you'd also need to consider carefully in implementing my original designs, as well as a brilliant way to finance the creation, development, and maintenance of the network.
[1] http://archive.ripple-project.org/Protocol/Protocol
Hi Ryan, it's Mark. I worked with Jorge in creating Freimarkets [1]. I was also on the Ripple mailing list back in the pre-OpenCoin days.
[1] http://freico.in/docs/freimarkets.pdf
XRP adds nothing new to the bridging problem. Any other common currency could have been used, such as USD-backed assets or bitcoin. XRP was Jeb McCaleb's stab at Bitcoin 2.0, and the bridging issue simply a post-facto rationalization. In a world where there is already existing decentralized currencies, or multiple legacy options for a common currency, there is no need for yet another centrally issued scarce-money... except that OpenCoin stands to materially benefit from forcing XRP down our throats.
It does so by economically limiting its own usefulness. Accounts and assets cost real money to create and maintain - more so than the fees involved with bitcoin. That brings us back to the traditional banking model of institutional asset issuers and heavyweight accounts, and rules out a number of protocols involving ephemeral asset issuance or privacy-enhancing one-time-use accounts.
I don't consider the problem solved if the "solution" involves restrictions that unnecessarily limit the capability of the system.
On this I could not disagree more. XRP is an unnatural, ill-fit hack on top of Ripple which provides no tangible benefit that could not be achieved by other less restrictive, and less obviously self-serving means. It therefore ads risk to anyone investing time or resources into using Ripple, as it may be surpassed by a superior fork which removes XRP.
Financing the creation of a new, distributed, peer-to-peer network is not easy, I know - it's been hard trying to get funds for Freimarkets. But the OpenCoin / Mastercoin / Bitshares model is not the way to do it, in my opinion. Rather the bitcoin model is: distributed issuance and make your money from the economy that develops, not an underhanded wealth transfer written into the protocol.
I have talked with many of the devs from Ripple that post on BitcoinTalk often, they are so adamant that the XRP is required I feel that it's a stealth currency.
One developer was paid, instead of stock a billion ripples. The first thing Opencoin/Ripplelabs did was giveaway very small amounts to create artificial scarcity and then open an exchange (through Bitstamp) to sell off as many as possible for Bitcoins. At the peak Ripples were worth more than all the Bitcoins in the world.
I remember Joel (I think) was adamant that Ripple was not a currency at all, except we ended getting him to admit it was meant to be a competing currency to Bitcoin.
I do not trust them at all, especially now Google are involved in backing them.
Hadn't heard about Google backing them, do you have details?
http://www.coindesk.com/google-ventures-invests-in-bitcoin-c...
The fact is that you can't transact separate currencies which are on separate protocols, unless you represent one as an issued-asset on the other. Colored Coins use the native currency of its protocol - bitcoin. The developer of the first colored coins client, Stefan Thomas, moved on to become CTO of ripple. Ripple is a new protocol altogether, with advantages over extensions/overlays on the bitcoin protocol, the main ones being no mining and much quicker ledgers.
User-issued assets on ripple have a customizable transit fee which is effectively collected in the issued currency (since the fee is paid from the balance of the issue back to the issuer). For example, bitstamp's issuer fee is 0.2%, so any trades of bitstampBTC or bitstampUSD pay 0.2% of the amount back to bitstamp's issuer address. (the fee is set at creation of the issuing address and can't be changed later).
This is not true. There are mechanisms for cross-chain trade, and with a few small changes theres quite a bit more that you can do. See the smart contracts page of the wiki, and the freimarkets whitepaper for example.