Tag Archives: Ripple

DH Corporation introduced blockchain solutions

During the recent months a lot of companies such as Dwolla, Earthport and PayCommerce announced the development of various solutions based on the blockchain.
Today is the turn of DH Corporation, also known as D+H, a Canadian leading end-to-end provider of retail, commercial and transaction banking solutions.
D+H introduced a proprietary blockchain solution within its Global PAYplus platform.
Global PAYplus already allows different methods of payment and D+H probably will announce soon the introduction of the digital currencies.
According to Moti Porath, D+H’s executive vice president of global pre-sales, the blockchain will help the company in several ways:

“We believe that 2016 will see banks transitioning from experimenting in the innovation labs to implementing solutions that drive value to their customers. At this time, we see the most relevance for blockchain capabilities in payments, so it made sense to move quickly to add capabilities to our global payments hub”, he said.
So it seems D+H really believes in the blockchain potential:
“[Banks] will be able to utilize a secure, closed loop, distributed ledger system to connect bank networks, move money in real-time, and improve access to liquidity.”
Going deep, D+H wants to create a node similar to a liquidity pool, with several liquidity pool accounts externally created.
This is Porath’s explanation:
“The liquidity pool node simulates accounts in a central bank and, when value is exchanged and the blocks are being updated, the central bank node is updated to reflect the exchange of value.”

D+H partners with Ripple

On October, 2015, D+H started a partnership with Ripple “to deliver innovative payment capabilities by integrating Global PAYplus, its global payment services hub, with Ripple’s distributed ledger technology, creating a foundation for further disruptive payments innovation”, stated dh.com.
Gene Neyer, head of product management, said:

“Distributed ledgers have the potential to radically transform the payment process. They remove the frictional costs and reduce the complexities of using multiple intermediaries; reduce or eliminate the reconciliation processes; and transform and enrich existing business processes by providing alternative sources of liquidity. This investment in distributed financial technology demonstrates D+H’s continued commitment to payments innovation. The payments landscape is rapidly evolving and D+H’s forward-looking solutions enable financial institutions and corporations around the globe to grow and compete.”

Download the whitepaper here

Also, D+H published a whitepaper in which they explain the five reasons why the company believes the banking industry should invest into the blockchain technology. You can download it here for free.

Open your free digital wallet here to store your cryptocurrencies in a safe place.

Amelia Tomasicchio

Bitcoin’s Monthly Recap of May 2015

Welcome to HolyTransaction’s fifth monthly recap for the year 2015. This past month of May has reminded everyone in the Bitcoin world why we are here; during that time, the bitcoin price fell from a high of $231 to a low of $223.51, according to Bitcoin exchange Bitstamp.

Roger Ver and OKCoin Dispute Over Bitcoin.com
Since the news months ago that the highly-visible Bitcoin.com domain would be managed by Chinese Bitcoin exchange OKCoin, things have really changed. In a series of Reddit posts, Roger Ver, OKCoin, and former OKCoin employees aired out all of their dirty laundry. Amid accusations of forged contracts and blatant lies, the spat resulted in a huge blow to the reputation of OKCoin. Bitcoin.com currently redirects to Bitcoin.org, which is maintained by the Bitcoin Foundation.

Bitcoin Exchange BitFinex Hot Wallet Hacked
BitFinex, one of the leading Bitcoin exchanges, has been hacked for just over 1500 BTC earlier in May. According to the exchange, trading was not affected and 99.5% of users’ funds were never accessible to the hacker. The hack, while unfortunate, demonstrates the efficacy of cold and hot wallets, which may have been the downfall of Mt. Gox. Notably, another European Bitcoin exchange, BitStamp, also suffered a hot wallet hack earlier in 2015.

Ross Ulbricht Sentenced to Life In Prison
Ross Ulbricht, the founder of the Deep Web marketplace Silk Road, has been sentenced to life in prison. Many in the community feel that a life sentence is too harsh given the nature of Ulbricht’s crimes. An appeal is planned by Ulbricht’s defense lawyer, Joshua Dratel. Notably, the trial which convicted Ulbricht did not allow the introduction of key evidence that may tell a different story. The sentence was passed by Judge Katherine Forrest, who was appointed to her federal judgeship on the recommendation of Senator Schumner, the first politician to publicly call for the takedown of Silk Road.

North Carolina Passes Bitcoin Bill
The House of Representatives from North Carolina has passed a new bill to modify the Money Transmitters Act. The bill, HB 289, specifically includes and clarifies the state’s stance on virtual currencies such as Bitcoin. The bill was introduced by Republican Representative Stephen M. Ross, who is also a VP at Wells Fargo. The Bitcoin community has been receptive to North Carolina’s clarification, which contrasts with actions from states such as New York. Perianne Boring, the founder of the Chamber of Digital Commerce, commented: “I would be rather straight forward and say that the community favors regulatory clarity over ambiguity that can create ultimately greater exposure for companies, especially those that do not have the legal budgets necessary to evaluate the ambiguities. The legislation represents a lighter touch than the NY DFS proposal by protecting the interest of consumers but  not imposing any additional regulatory burdens or costs on business to business transactions.  It also has avoided some of the pitfalls of existing statutory schemes.  It may not be what a  segment of the community wants – no regulation. But NC is not a no regulation state and this is a useful step forward in making the law work for digital currency companies.”

Ripple Labs Receives $28 Million USD in Funding
Ripple Labs, the company behind the Ripple payment protocol and network, has recently closed a $28 million USD funding round. This round marks their Series A funding and saw many participants from around the world. Ripple has made waves in the digital currency space by sealing deals with several banks around the world. However, Ripple has also faced increasing scrutiny from users wary of centralized control as well as Stellar, an offshoot created by one of Ripple’s original founders which even used some of the same code. Chris Larsen, Ripple Labs’ CEO, commented: “With investors like CME Group and Seagate joining the fold, we’re well positioned to accelerate adoption amongst these key customers.”

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Satoshi

Stellard compared to Rippled

So there’s a new fork in town going by the name of Stellar!

Jed McCaleb had an idea for a new cryptocurrency which did not depend on mining and hired a small team of developers (David Schwartz, Stefan Thomas and Arthur Britto). This idea grew into one which borrowed from Ryan Fugger‘s original concept of community credit and was designed to provide a scalable solution for global payments with liquidity provided by anyone who wanted to make an offer or supply credit to satisfy that payment. An elegant concept was the basis for the formation of OpenCoin, later to become Ripple Labs. Jed hired Chris Larsen, and a subsequent, well-documented fallout occurs over the allocation of 20% of the XRP to three individuals and the fair distribution of the remainder. Jed leaves Ripple Labs and announces a “Secret Bitcoin Project”, which it turns out is a fork of the rippled codebase with some minor modifications and a new user interface. The release is partnered with a clearly expressed set of rules governing the distribution of the XRP equivalent known as STR.
So what are these code modifications and do they make a big difference to how likely Stellar is to succeed? Let’s have a look at the significant commits which have occurred since the fork attempt began on April 24th 2014. We’ll disregard all of the obvious “rename ripple=>stellar” alterations. 
Account ids begin with a g is a fairly straightforward change to the base58 alphabet for encoding account ids and other Stellar types. The main result is that all account ids begin the letter “g”, rather than an “r”. Why “g”? Who knows. 
Add InflationDest field is perhaps the most revolutionary change. The idea is that each account gets to nominate another account which, each week, receives a share of 0.019% of all the STR in existence, perhaps as a result of continued good stewardship of the network and supporting codebase. The field is optional. The formula is here and then revised here and here and here. Two new fields FeePool and InflationSeq are added to the LedgerHeader. 
Accounts can be deleted means that a user can consolidate his/her STR back into a single account from multiple accounts. Trustlines must first be removed. 
Clean up old unimplemented data structures, such as Nickname and GeneratorMap
Bootstrapping from a centralised peer provider is removed
A switch to ed25519 from P256 for creating and verifying signatures is implemented. 
Expose wallet_public to anyone and rename to create_keys. This is a security risk as someone could fake a response on a server and be in possession of your secret. 
Remove EmailHash, WalletLocator, WalletSize, MessageKey and Domain fields from AccountRoot serialization format and the flag PasswordSpent
A painful merge of the main rippled codebase. 
Some surprising lack of familiarity with a key data structure in the codebase. 
So, does the above represent any serious deviation or innovation on the rippled implementation? The inflation is an interesting idea, but it reminds me of the old bankers’ adage.

“There are two types of people in the world. Those that understand compound interest and those that pay it”.

The switch to ed25519 may one day permit performance gains, but not before any nodestore speed issues have been solved. The ability to delete an Account is useful. Everything else is mostly cosmetic and housekeeping. 
What is obvious from the team of three developers working on the C++ codebase is that there is not a deep understanding of what is going on in the internals, at least not yet. There is no published roadmap of future changes. Worst of all is that recent security fixes on the main rippled codebase have not been integrated into the stellard codebase and a new security flaw has been wilfully introduced.
The switch to an open and thoroughly explained plan for STR distribution is a welcome one, but a web page with words on it is just that. Time will tell.

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Satoshi
stellar

The Bitcoin Secret Project reveals Stellar

(TechCrunch) There’s Bitcoin, the asset and hedge against fiat currencies and the politics of their central banks.
And then there’s Bitcoin, a fundamental innovation around a
distributed public ledger of transactions. Many crypto-currencies try to
split or play with the distinction between the two.
An early attempt was the Ripple, from OpenCoin. But the team behind that startup split. Co-founder and Mt. Gox creator Jed McCaleb left to go work on other stealth projects.
Now he’s re-appeared again with a new non-profit called Stellar, that’s being backed by Stripe. Joyce Kim, who founded a company that OpenCoin acquired called SimpleHoney, is also leading the non-profit.
The similarities are obvious. Stellar
is a decentralized protocol for sending and receiving money in any pair
of currencies. It’s not exactly a competitor to Bitcoin; it’s meant to
facilitate transactions in all kinds of currencies from the majors like
the yen, dollar and euro to other emerging-market fiat currencies.
That protocol is paired with a crypto-currency called the Stellar.
They’re starting out with a fixed amount of Stellars that they’re freely
gifting to new users. This is very different from Bitcoin, which must
be mined through machines solving complex cryptographic problems in
exchange for small amounts of the currency awarded at fixed time
intervals.
Kim has argued in the past that this is a more egalitarian approach.
Mining means that only people with high technical skill or the capital
to operate now-expensive mining hardware get access to new Bitcoin. But
Stellar is distributing half of its initial amount to anyone who will
sign-up for it through the program. Stripe is getting 2 percent of
Stellars in existence in exchange for $3 million.
A quarter of the Stellars will go to non-profits via an ‘increased
access’ program, while another 20 percent will go to existing Bitcoin
holders based on a snapshot of the blockchain on a specific date in the
future. The remaining 5 percent will go toward operational costs. If the
value of Stellar’s payment network increases, so will the value of the
Stellars that the non-profit holds.
Also, unlike Bitcoin, the Stellar economy has a built-in inflation rate of 1 percent indefinitely.
Stellar’s board has Stripe co-founder Patrick Collison, Khosla VC and former Square COO Keith Rabois
along with McCaleb on the board. Also advising the non-profit are
security expert Dan Kaminsky, Joi Ito, Ronaldo Lemos, Linda Stone, Y
Combinator’s Sam Altman, AngelList’s Naval Ravikant, Jackson Palmer, Greg Stein, and WordPress’ Matt Mullenweg.

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Satoshi
Alex Grey Cosmic Christ CROP1 1000x288

Smart contracts may depend on Smart Oracles, said CTO of Ripple Labs

Smart contracts may depend on Smart Oracles to inform contracts about the state of the outside world, said CTO of Ripple Labs
(BitcoinMagazine) Stefan Thomas is one of the more talented and respected developers in
the space. An old hat at this young technology, he has been making
waves as the CTO of Ripple labs. In a recent effort he has set his
sights on smart contracts technology. The designs and implementation he
and his team have come up with are interesting, to say the least.
In a white paper entitled Smart Oracles, we see described a novel, simple, and flexible approach to smart contracts.
In such a system, rules can be written in any programming language,
and contracts can interact with any service that accepts
cryptographically signed commands. The paper also includes an
implementation of smart oracles, called Codius (based on the Latin “ius” meaning “law”).
Smart contracts are an exciting new frontier for technology,
business, and law that have the potential to usher in a wave of
innovation and serve as a building block for a next chapter of the
internet.
The concept of a smart contract is to formally encode the conditions
and outcomes of a legal agreement into a computer program. Rather than
rely on another party to enforce the terms of the arrangement, the
obligations of a smart contract are settled automatically and
autonomously through the execution of its code.
As such, math-based currency networks like Bitcoin and Ripple
provide an important building block for smart contracts by allowing the
transfer of digital assets with a cryptographic signature. The benefits
of using smart contracts instead of traditional contracts are increased
speed, efficiency, and trust that the contract will be executed exactly
as agreed.
Uatu, The Watcher
Most proposals for smart contracts depend on independent entities to
inform contracts about the state of the outside world. Bitcoin contracts
rely on “oracles
to attest to facts from the outside world by introducing signatures
into the network if and only if specific conditions are met.
For instance, the smart contract for a will would need to know
whether or not someone had died. Such a system typically requires the
smart contract code to be executed on the consensus network itself. But
encoding advanced logic and executing untrusted code is complicated to
integrate. Until now, this has been one of the primary obstacles for
creating a viable smart contract system.
Smart oracles take the concept of oracles a step further by placing
the untrusted code execution in the oracles’ hands. Smart oracles, then,
are trusted or semi-trusted entities that can both provide information
about the outside world and execute the code to which the contracting
parties agreed.
By decoupling the execution of untrusted code from the consensus
databases and other services that track and transfer asset ownership,
smart contracts can be achieved without increasing the complexity of
existing consensus networks like Bitcoin and Ripple.
Algolon, The Observer
Without being tied to any single consensus network, contracts created
using smart oracles can interact with multiple networks at once as well
as virtually any type of online service. This means that a single smart
contract could interact with Bitcoin and Ripple, web-based services
like PayPal, Google, Ebay, etc. or even other Internet protocols, such
as SSH, LDAP, SMTP and XMPP.
The Codius implementation of smart oracles is designed to provide
developers with a robust and familiar platform to build smart contracts
and hit the ground running. Because Codius uses Google’s Native Client to sandbox untrusted code, developers can write contracts in any programming language.
Codius and smart oracles in general open up new possibilities for
developers, entrepreneurs, and enterprising legal and financial
professionals. Agreements that previously required lengthy legal
contracts can be translated into code and run automatically by smart
oracles.
Smart contracts hold the potential to empower people to build a
fairer, more affordable and more efficient legal system and smart
oracles are one of the simplest ways to realize that dream. Potential
use cases include bridges between value networks, escrow, cryptocurrency
wallet controls, auctions for digital assets, derivatives, debt and
equity, smart property and voting.
Since the system is extensible, the functionality will continue to expand as the ecosystem develops.

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Satoshi

How XRP may actually benefit Bitcoin

(Crypt.la) Currently, there are about 250 different digital currencies competing to be the preferred version.
As it stands, Bitcoin is king of the hill. However, at least one form
is clearing its own path and may actually end up helping Bitcoin and
others.
 Ripple is essentially setting out
to be the next PayPal. The difference is that Ripple will handle
multiple currencies—perhaps even all of them—and make
transactions immediate. There will be no more waiting around for days in
order for a payment to move from one party to another. To facilitate
this process, Ripple invented its own currency, XRP. Unsurprisingly,
many have seen this digital currency as a natural rival to Bitcoin and
other versions. Yet this isn’t necessarily the case. Unlike Bitcoin, XRP
has a stated purpose it’s been designed “to streamline transactions”.
Ripple really doesn’t need it to do much more than that, so it
seems unlikely they have much interest in putting resources behind
making it the number one digital currency in the world. XRP may turn out
to be the best thing that ever happened to Bitcoin. One challenge to
Bitcoin, or any other digital currency for that matter, will always be
the public’s reluctance to adopt it. As the years go by, it may dwindle,
but for the foreseeable future, this remains a hurdle.
Thanks to XRP, though, transactions
can involve Bitcoin without one party ever even knowing about it. For
example, if you wish to buy a book from someone using Bitcoins and they
wish to be compensated with yuan, this would normally be problematic.
You might even stop using Bitcoins because so many people you purchase
from don’t accept them. With Ripple, make the purchase and they’ll
convert your Bitcoin into XRP and then into yuan. You get your book
using Bitcoins and the seller gets the yuan they desire. This highlights
XRP’s ability to extend the reach of any digital currency on the
market. So while it may be viewed as a rival, the truth is that it might
be their greatest ally.

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Satoshi
ripple network protocol1

Ripple explained: medieval banking with a digital twist

The Live Ripple Network Can be Visualised Here

(CoinDesk) What is Ripple? Well, it is both a digital currency and a payments protocol, and it is the latter that has got people excited.
Ripple has been hitting the news recently, with banks saying it has promise, and even for the first time starting to use it for services. But many people don’t understand it, so how does it work, exactly?
A good parallel is the hawala network
a traditional, non-digital way of sending money from city to
city. Hawala has its roots in medieval Arabia, and is still in use today
in places where banks won’t or can’t operate.

A medieval banking system

Hawala
is best described as money transmission without money movement,
providing the appearance of instant remittance between separate
locations; for example, sending money between different cities or
countries.
In the basic case, say Alex wants to send money to Beth:
  • Alex goes to his local hawala agent and gives him some cash and a password, which he and Beth share.
  • The agent telephones Beth’s local agent and tells him to release funds to someone who can provide the password.
  • Beth walks in to her agent, says the password, and receives cash. Commissions can be taken from either or both agents.
Ripple_medieval_1
Note
that money has been transmitted from Alex to Beth, but the physical
notes have not moved. We are left in a situation where Alex’s agent owes
Beth’s agent money.
They can either settle the debt later, or
hope that there may be reverse transactions if other clients want to
move money in the opposite direction.
Also note that trust is involved. In this scenario, there are three trust relationships:
  1. Alex has to trust that his agent will do the right thing, as he is handing over cash.
  2. Beth has to trust that her agent will do the right thing, as she is expecting to receive cash.
  3. The agents need to trust each other over the repayment of the debt (IOUs).

Moving to Ripple

Now
we can have websites or shops that perform the function of agents, and
instead of agents phoning each other, we can communicate the IOUs
electronically.
This is how Ripple works: Alex logs on to his
preferred Ripple gateway, deposits money to it, and instructs them to
release funds to Beth via her gateway. Beth collects her funds.
You now understand Ripple. Simple eh?

Not just cash

In the example above, we talked about cash. Now this can also work with physical gold.
So
long as both gateways are prepared to accept and hand out the precious
metal, and the gateways have a trust relationship that allows the IOUs
of gold (as opposed to IOUs of cash in the first example), the network
still works, and you can transmit gold.
Alex gives gold, Beth receives gold, and Alex’s agent owes Beth’s agent gold.
You now understand that Ripple can work for gold, not just money.

Anything goes

Now replace the word ‘gold’ with ‘anything’.
Now, you can transmit anything without moving it, so long as both gateways are set up to deal in it.
This
works best for non-perishable, fungible goods (cash is good, gold is
OK, as are cryptocurrencies, but can also be extended to beer and
flowers, if the gateways want to deal in them.
You now understand that Ripple can transfer anything.

Conversion of goods

If
either gateway is prepared to exchange cash with gold (ie: act as a
gold trader, or ‘market maker’ in Ripple terminology), then Alex can put
cash in at his gateway and Beth can get gold out at hers.
You now understand that Ripple can also morph stuff.

No direct trust? Find a chain

What if Alex’s gateway doesn’t have a trust relationship with Beth’s gateway?
So
long as there are intermediary gateways who can form a chain of trust
for the object being passed (cash, or gold, or whatever), the
transaction will work.
The Ripple algorithm tries to find the
shortest trust path between the gateways. So, thinking back to hawala,
Alex’s agent may not trust Beth’s agent, but there may be a third agent
who trusts the other two. So there will be two IOUs: Alex’s agent owes
the third agent, who owes Beth’s agent.
Ripple_medieval_2

No chain of trust? Use ripples.

What if the network can’t find any chain of trust between the two gateways at all for the cash or goods in question?
This is where ‘ripples’ (XRP) come in. XRP is the ‘currency of last resort’ for the ripple network.
All
gateways provide a price in XRP of anything they deal in (for example: a
dollar is 200 XRP; 1 oz of gold might be 260,000 XRP).
You could say, USD is the currency of last resort in the USA – that is, everything has a price in USD.
This
means, within the Ripple network, you can convert anything to a number
of XRPs, transfer the XRPs via the trust chains, then convert back at
the end gateway, if needed.

XRP is not just a currency of last resort

As well as being a ‘bridging currency’ or a ‘currency of last resort’, XRP also has other notable benefits.
Firstly,
XRP as a currency settles immediately, so when it’s sent on the
Ripple network, the ownership of the actual asset changes – so it’s
final and trustless.
This is in contrast to IOUs, which, although
transferred instantly, still need to be redeemed from a gateway. This
gives rise to counterparty credit risk, as it needs you to trust that
the gateway will fulfill its obligations.
Secondly, transfers of XRPs over ripple incur fewer and smaller transaction fees, as there are fewer intermediaries needed.

Who owes who?

Who
is keeping track of all the IOUs? In the hawala system, each agent
keeps their own ledger, and they are reconciled periodically within
their network of trust.
In Ripple, a public ledger of accounts,
balances, and IOUs are kept updated by everyone simultaneously in the
Ripple network, which is a distributed collection of servers around the
world.
The servers agree on changes by consensus (effectively: “Do
we all agree this transaction can take place?”). There is no central
‘authority’ who says yes or no to transactions, and anyone can be a
server by running free software on their computer.

That’s just the beginning

There
is more here, and as you dig, you’ll learn about market makers, who
provide prices at which they are prepared to trade between goods (for
example, cash for gold, gold for silver, silver for XRP, XRP for GBP,
and so on).
You’ll start to understand why every transaction costs
a small number of XRP (a 1/1000 of a cent, to stop transaction spam),
and that the network is pre-lubricated with 100 billion XRPs.
You’ll
discover the elegance of confirmation via consensus. You’ll learn that
transactions based on cryptography on a distributed network with public
ledgers is faster, cheaper, lower risk, and much, much better in almost
every way possible than centralised pre-Internet correspondent banking
messaging networks such as SWIFT, that some financial institutions
currently operate on. You’ll learn much, much more.

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Satoshi