A universal, federated payment protocol

ripple.com

1 pointnemonoko3 comments

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the article begins by saying that a centralized system is bad, because you must use it to interact with the system's clients. Then it goes on to say "it would be awesome if everybody was using Ripple".

Beside the tongue-in-cheek comment, payment systems are already decentralized. You can send money to anyone just by knowing their IBAN number, independently of the bank you're affiliated to.

Have you ever tried to send a bank wire before? It can take a week to process and it costs on average $15+. Not an awesome technology.

I have not said it's awesome, I just said it is decentralized :)

How will your system cope with the augmentation of transactions? I see you use a consensus based system like Bitcoin, and these tend to take more and more time to converge when the number of transactions gets bigger.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com