Interledger Protocol (ILP) - Public Facing Applications, Smart Contract Enabled?

[binnyrens]

Hi, 

As I understand it, interledger protocol is supposed to connect ledgers (whether blockchains or banks), allowing for the seamless transfer of value. I understand that many financial institutions are using interledger by adopting ripplenet.

Still, I am confused why there does not seem to be any consumer facing applications that employ interledger. For example, why are there no applications that allow you to send money from the Ethereum ledger to the Bitcoin ledger nearly for free using the protocol? Or are there such applications I am simply not aware of? This is especially perplexing given that interledger is supposed to facilitate nearly free transfers between blockchains. In addition, the system is open source, public and readily available through API's. 

A second question: can you embed ILP payments into smart contracts? Can a smart contract hold dollars in escrow and promise to pay them out through the interledger? I haven't thought this through very carefully, but basically - is ILP smart contract enabled?

Let me know if you have any thoughts on either of these items. Thank you! 

[King34Maine]

45 minutes ago, binnyrens said:

Hi, 

As I understand it, interledger protocol is supposed to connect ledgers (whether blockchains or banks), allowing for the seamless transfer of value. I understand that many financial institutions are using interledger by adopting ripplenet.

Still, I am confused why there does not seem to be any consumer facing applications that employ interledger. For example, why are there no applications that allow you to send money from the Ethereum ledger to the Bitcoin ledger nearly for free using the protocol? Or are there such applications I am simply not aware of? This is especially perplexing given that interledger is supposed to facilitate nearly free transfers between blockchains. In addition, the system is open source, public and readily available through API's. 

A second question: can you embed ILP payments into smart contracts? Can a smart contract hold dollars in escrow and promise to pay them out through the interledger? I haven't thought this through very carefully, but basically - is ILP smart contract enabled?

Let me know if you have any thoughts on either of these items. Thank you! 

I believe Ripple and the W3C have just finalized the last bit of updates. Stefan Thomas recently did a presentations showing how Interledger would work along with Codius (Ripple's Smart Contract platform). The link below goes directly to the Demo portion, however, I recommend watching the entire exchange from the beginning as both Stefan and Chris Larsen fielded quite a few questions from the moderator as well as the audience.

FYI Stefan's presentation decribing ILP starts @ 17:55ish

See: 

 

Edited February 28, 2018 by King34Maine

[Guest]

1 hour ago, binnyrens said:

Still, I am confused why there does not seem to be any consumer facing applications that employ interledger.

give it time, the protocol is still young and hasnt even been rolled out into e.g. browsers yet, so mainstream/consumer adoption is a way off -- but there has been some traction with W3 and ofc big partnership announcements with those using the tech like e.g. Gates FOundation

[Guest Ripplista79]

This is by far and away the #1 thing I am interested in regarding XRP.  This board has so much discussion regarding price action.  I love price action as much as the next person but this is the real opportunity.

Imagine if you create an app, oracle, microservice, etc. utilizing the ILP.  What if the application you build provides a microservice between machines and the fee for utilizing the application is paid by the machines in the form of a microtransaction? 

Then you would have a business model that is automated and making 0.00000002 (2 drips) per occurrence. Now let's say your application is successful in the real world and is used 1,000 plus times a day.

In this case, you would be the owner of a business that has near zero cost, near zero overhead. 

I would be very interested to see more conversation on this forum regarding this idea.  I think a lot of people here are HODLing and waiting for upward price movement.  Instead of searching Linkdin pages, scouring for positive updates that only lead to downward price pressure, and the ever time-consuming debunking of FUD, we should be instead focusing our attention and efforts on ideas that can spring from the utilization of ILP.  As a small niche online community, this would be an effort that could not only make us money but also serve to make the XRP ecosystem more robust.

That to me is the real opportunity outside of the projected upward trending price action.

Maybe you don't know how to code.  But you do know how to think.  What ideas can you offer?

 

[King34Maine]

4 minutes ago, Ripplista79 said:

This is by far and away the #1 thing I am interested in regarding XRP.  This board has so much discussion regarding price action.  I love price action as much as the next person but this is the real opportunity.

 

100% agree!!!!!

[binnyrens]

23 hours ago, zerpdigger said:

give it time, the protocol is still young and hasnt even been rolled out into e.g. browsers yet, so mainstream/consumer adoption is a way off -- but there has been some traction with W3 and ofc big partnership announcements with those using the tech like e.g. Gates FOundation

Are there any technical issues that need to be ironed out  before someone could create an app that connects multiple blockchains/cryptocurrencies using interledger?

For example, could you create an app that connects ethereum and ethereum classic using ILP? Specifically, an app allowing a connector who has money on both blockchains to facilitate transfers by accepting a sender's money on one blockchain while releasing that money to a recipient on another blockchain. The process would be secured by cryptographic escrow, eliminating coutnerparty risk.

What are the technical factors, if any, that are preventing that vision from being executed? 

The reason I would be particularly confused if this hasn't been done is that the available resources portray ILP integrations to be relatively easy to create/facilitate. This video on Youtube shows Bitstamp and Gatehub talking about how they connected their services through ILP within 5 days of work. 

Let me know if you have any insight on this! 

Edited March 1, 2018 by binnyrens

[Guest]

43 minutes ago, binnyrens said:

Let me know if you have any insight on this! 

wow, that's impressive, hadn't seen that video -- sounds like you understand more than i do!

i expect that good documentation will help, and ILP seems close to a stable well-formed release, but if you have a decent technical understanding of the protocol, i would encourage you to reach out to the ripple devs direct, as they are both active on this forum as well as on social media etc... I'm sure they'd be delighted about any ILP projects

[KarmaCoverage]

On 2/28/2018 at 11:42 AM, binnyrens said:

can you embed ILP payments into smart contracts?

Sure, that demo at the Google talk may even be an example,  I'm not sure exactly how they built it though. 

On 2/28/2018 at 12:45 PM, zerpdigger said:

the protocol is still young and hasnt even been rolled out into e.g. browsers yet

There is this, but I'm not sure if this is the most current or developed ILP browser plugin out there. https://github.com/interledgerjs/ilp 

I also think there was some ILP browser plugin being developed for all the major browsers with the W3C group, not sure if this is that.  https://www.npmjs.com/search?q=ilp-plugin

Here is this for bitcoin lightning etc. https://github.com/interledgerjs/ilp-plugin-lnd-asym-client

On 2/28/2018 at 11:42 AM, binnyrens said:

I am confused why there does not seem to be any consumer facing applications that employ interledger.

You can look for some of the "Five Bells" demo stuff for the closest thing I've seen to a consumer facing app using ILP. Just search the ILP github page, and here is the basics for running a connector. https://github.com/interledgerjs/ilp-connector

---

There was also this thread about trying to make and RCL implementation to be a decenteralized exchange sort of like the prevalent thinking back in 2013-14. My personal opinion is that this is doable, maybe not fully trustless and decenteralized coming out of the gate, possibly entirely "on ledger" (new amendments open up new functionality), but especially with Codius, this should be doable.