dik

This topic has been discussed 1000 times already. xCurrent uses "blockchain technology", and the message is targeted at technical nitwits that vaguely know the term "blockchain", any more precise description would turn on their screensaver. Relax.

Todaysgazette: wasting my time by copying information from twitter without doing any effort to provide more detail or context to the story. @Wolex: wasting my time by copying a link to this "non-article" without any effort to provide more detail or context, not even bothering to make the url clickable. Me: wasted my time clicking this post, following that link, now writing this, while thinking how this can be improved, by reputation ranking of linked sites, and posters through tipping.

2011: bitcoin will never reach $1000, because blah blah.

Ashton.

Not true. This was not initiated by Ripple.

Where does this banner link to? That will probably answer your question. Any discussion about this banner without knowing this is rather pointless. It is not even certain it’s a campaign from Ripple.

I dont understand what argument you are making. Does this have anything to do with Ripple's ability of blocking amendments? Or do you want to discuss the difference between software / sdk's developed with a decent business model behind it to guarantee long term support, versus fire-and-forget software created to collect a few million XLM and create the illusion of a thriving developer ecosystem?

I did not know Stellar had a community. And I don't care about it either. Stellar was always consumer focused. Ripple is focused on banks and payment providers. Banks don't easily run software built by people in their spare time. But let's just give xSpring a bit of time before writing off the XRP community. But what has a competitor's strategy has to do with your claim that Ripple cannot be removed from the UNL, and therefore has a veto right on amendments? I was hoping to convince you that this is just not true, but it seems hardly anyone changes their mind online nowadays.

You say Ripple is not doing well, and then you point to stuff built by the Stellar community? Should your conclusion not be that the XRP community is not doing well? That is you, at least it was you! Did you not abandon your wallet project? This does not change the fact that it is trivial to remove Ripple's validators from the UNL, and also trivial to convince others to do the same, if Ripple ever follows a bad road or pursues a bad strategy. Or when other entities follow a much better one. That entity could be you. Show the world you're a much better leader, and the network will follow you.

Your argument works the other way. If, as you say, it does not have any direct effect on the state of the network if an individual validator removes Ripple's validators from their UNL, then why don't they do that, if they don't like Ripple's governance? That can only mean everybody is happy with Ripple's leadership (and why wouldn't they be?). Because if they weren't, it is trivial to remove them from the UNL, and convince others to do the same. It is even trivial to disable their escrows with an amendment. And because of that, Ripple will make sure everybody stays happy with their leadership. It's a brilliant checks and balances mechanism. They can only play the king for as long as we allow them to play the king. One stupid move and they're out.

It is only a tricky discussion when discussing with people dat don't know what it means, or haven't bothered looking it up. Nobody is arguing crypto payments don't settle.

If the network decides it really needs some amendment, and Ripple blocks that, the network can simply collectively remove their validators, and then activate the amendment. Or just threaten to remove them, possibly with the same effect. Therefore, in practice, they currently don't. The network just does not care about the checks amendment. That is the beauty of the way the XRP ledger is designed. It is impossible for a single entity to control it, activate amendments, or block them. Ripple can only play the king for as long as we allow them to play the king.

Right. So you keep Ripple's validators in your UNL for as long as you trust them to make the good decisions. And you'd remove them with a simple config edit, as soon as they demonstrate that they don't. And you will probably convince others to do so too. So, just to be clear, their "veto right" can only be exercized for as long as the network allows them to, and can be removed tomorrow. That's not a veto right in the common sense of that word. I'm sure you completely agree with that, I just wanted to make clear to other readers that Ripple does not really have a veto right on amendments.

There isn't "the UNL". If you're not happy with Ripple's dominance in your UNL, remove them.

Oh lets do that. How shall we do this? How many noobs should we approach, and how should we select them, show a bitcoin chart and the xrpcharts, and ask them which one is the most decentralized? My theory is that our experiment will show the exact opposite: they will point to the chart with 9 different markets and say XRP is most decentralized.