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Comment by rxl | Hacker News Reader

First, let me quote http://ripplescam.org/:

  But wait – you can become your own validator! [...]
  The consensus system ensures there is only one ledger – the most accepted one.
  If you run your own validator, you must connect with OpenCoin Inc servers, or you
  will be building a different ledger. In practice, it is not possible to
  “dethrone” OpenCoin Inc as you have to co-operate with OpenCoin Inc.

Second, I'll point out that while minimizing the number of validators may be attractive, it also makes the currency much more vulnerable to top-down control, via governments, corporations, etc.

Last, if you're reading this, I'd suggest that you read up a bit about Ripple on Bitcoin Forum before you make conclusions about the currency - there are a lot of interesting discussions about its viability (like this one: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=146964.0).

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The quote from ripplescam.org just says what we all know, we all have to agree on a blockchain (in the case of Bitcoin) or a ledger (in the case of Ripple) or the system breaks. Part of it is false though, you can connect to servers not run by us. So long as they're also trying to agree with us (or those who are trying to agree with us), it will work. Ripple uses a distributed agreement protocol to order transactions. You have to try to agree with other people who are trying to agree. The group of people trying to agree that includes us defines the dominant transaction ordering (at the moment). But this is equally true of anyone else in the group we are in. It's the group that matters.

I don't see why minimizing the number of validators is attractive. We want as many as possible precisely because that ensures that administrative control can't be seized. It's just like mining in Bitcoin -- you want it distributed into the hands of as many people as possible as evenly as possible. We are working on making this happen now. Obviously, open sourcing the server was a necessary stop to broadening the validators.

No, it isn't in any way similar to Bitcoin's blockchain consensus - that's is designed to have blockchain disagreements which are resolved eventually by some of the nodes rolling back their blockchain and moving to the consensus one. As I understand it Ripple doesn't do that - once nodes have agreed on a ledger version they won't roll it back, and even if they did the OpenCoin Inc-controlled nodes don't care what non-OpenCoin-approved nodes think when forming their consensus.

So the net result is that, since everyone - including the exchanges - trusts the OpenCoin-run nodes, the only safe thing to do is wait for OpenCoin's servers to come to a consensus amongst themselves and then accept their ledger updates in their entirety. There is no way for anyone outside of OpenCoin Inc to influence what gets included in the ledger except if you allow it.

All the servers are agreeing with each other. You could just as well wait for any other reliable servers to come to a consensus amongst themselves and it would work just as well.

It is true that today we control the majority of validators that other important servers trust. We're working now on increasing the number of validators because that will improve the reliability and robustness of the network. We absolutely do not want people to have to trust us, or even think they have to trust us, so this is a real priority for us. Open sourcing the server was, obviously, a step in this direction.

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