I don't think it much matters because you can't easily get a human's attention. Most likely, nobody is going to look at those fields. We've tried to keep the design so that you can't easily compel another person's attention.

If models do arise, I think probably the best solution would simply be for the client not to report it to the user. For example, if someone not on your list of known accounts sends you a microscopic amount of XRP, you probably just don't want to get notified. If we do things like integrated messaging, they'll have anti-spam features built in such as requiring permission first.

We are not really expecting the transaction fee to protect against that kind of spam. It may to some extent do so "accidentally", but that's not what we mean when we say it protects against spam -- we mean pointless transactions aimed at clogging out legitimate transactions.

Someone who holds a large number of XRP can temporarily raise the cost of transactions. But to keep the cost of a transaction over, say, 10 cents, they'd have to be willing to put ten cents worth of XRP behind every transaction that they make. Presumably, the volume of their transactions will exceed the volume of legitimate transactions at that price, otherwise substantially the same thing would happen without them. So they'd be losing more XRP than the total value of all legitimate transactions that might occur. It's hard to imagine how this could possibly be done at a profit.


This has nothing do with XRP distribution. Provided they can be freely exchanged, the same problem would occur with any distribution. How you got your XRP in the first place has no effect on what you can most profitably do with them once you have them. If this attack worked, someone who bought up XRP could perform precisely the same attack with precisely the same effects. If it was profitable, people would be motivated to buy up XRP to attempt this.

Seems to me that one by one technical questions are being answered, mostly by referring to the as yet under specified and not yet peer reviewed consensus mechanism.

Let's do the following thought experiment to address the 50% of XRPs being controlled by OpenCoin and its founders (effectively the same locus of control) :

Imagine that over the next year, The Fed or some other very rich or "printing" entity patiently accumulates 10.5 million BTCs thereby effectively recreating the concentration that will be present in the ripple network after the distribution even if it costs them, say, $100 billion in freshly printed fiat.

Can this new overlord of Bitcoin suppress the price of Bitcoin from that moment on ? No, because in a non-fractional reserve crypto currency system ( as long as they can't introduce a "paper bitcoin" substitute similar to today's paper gold or silver. Ironically, Ripple if successful, can make highly leveraged fractional reserve BTC IOUs viable, watch out !!! ) with a hard upper bound on total possible number of units that can ever exist, the only way to keep the ceiling on the exchange rate would be to continue selling at whatever rate they chose to be the ceiling, but doing that keeps draining their bounded hoard, therefore that attempt will fail and in this resect ripple would be the same as Bitcoin in this imaginary capture scenario where 50% of all possible coins have been hoarded by The Fed.

Perhaps we should give it a name: "50% of total possible money supply capture attack"

Therefore, in the long run, the non-distributed 50% of XRPs will either stay sequestered off the market or will be drained away through sales ... Either way, that concentration and its perceived Systemic Risk will either remain theoretical or will inevitably dissipate if actually attempted in practice.

That makes absolutely no sense. Either the scheme is profitable beyond the raw value of the XRP or it's not. If it is, then it makes sense to buy up XRP to do it. If it isn't, then it makes no sense to do it regardless of how you got the XRP.

There's no pre or post mining: there's no mining.

There is a reason Bitcoin is mined: proof-of-work technology is what made Bitcoin possible, because it made it possible for the units to be acquired through the same method by anyone. Without proof-of-work, Bitcoin couldn't have come into existence; the same holds for any allocation of virtual currency. The only way to make Ripple work is to do away with XRP or find a way to make them "mine-able."

I made a post in another thread that is relevant to this one. I'll just make a partial quote here:
As an illustration, here's an example of these stamps.

The Norwegian Postal Service sells one book of "A Verden" (first class air mail international) stamps for 150 NOK. But they will continue to honor them as long as they are in "business". Unlike traditional stamps which have are denominated in a currency like NOK, this is a bit like a Ripple XRP.
Of course, unlike stamps, there are no "rare" or "special" XRPs - it's fungible and divisible. Also it's more likely that Ripple will collapse than that the Postal Service will collapse. They have some partial monopoly protections in some countries after all.

Edit:
This remains to be seen. Bitcoiners prefer XRP over IOUs just like gold bugs would prefer platinum over dollars, but if Ripple is to become successful, it has to attract users who will use IOUs for transactions. To use the analogy above, the postal service can't be successful if the only ones it attracts is stamp collectors.

And even if the user Opencoin claims that XRP is a currency, I don't accept it as a real currency even if it has an acronym. It's more like stamps or frequent flier miles.

If you're the type of person who faults the Post Office for "pre-mining" stamps or the Fed for "pre-mining" USD, I guess you could see it that way.

Now, there's plenty of problems with Ripple, but a lack of "proof of work", and a lack of wasted electricity, is not one of those problems. Distributing free XRP to people is a great marketing idea, but really it would still work if everyone had to buy XRPs.

The lack of source code is also preventing "post offices" from springing up everywhere.

If I'd been able to download the source I would probably have had gateways running by now for at least a few different altcoins. As it is maybe by the time the source does come out there won't be much point worrying about gateways until first a new network with some distribution that isn't so controversial is set up.

-MarkM-