Quote from: jancsika on February 22, 2013, 03:53:09 AM

Bitcoin uses the coinbase stuff to hand out the initial distribution. Ripple XRP is handed out by a single corporation. A single corporation in control of 80% of the currency is a textbook definition of central authority.

Of course. The design of Ripple doesn't require a central authority. But until it is decentralized, it will effectively have one.

Quote

I understand maaku and others like to celebrate the flexibility that comes from separating the coinbase function from transaction verification (and that's fine as long as they don't minimize the costs); regardless, it is simply false to claim Ripple is decentralized given how they've chosen to centrally bootstrap the initial distribution.

We're not claiming it is decentralized now. We're claiming it requires no central authorities and we are committed to decentralizing it.

Quote

I suppose if the corp. ultimately succeeds in distributing this sum before running into any major problems you could then genuinely claim there is no central authority or central point of failure. But only then.

I agree. I would say we would also have to wait until a significant fraction of the operating servers aren't under OpenCoin's direct (or perhaps even indirect) control. (For example, until then, if OpenCoin wanted to, it could force a design change that allowed you to create XRP or delete other people's IOUs. Actually, probably not, but you get the idea.)

Again, no central authorities are required by the design and we are committed to a having a decentralized system. We genuinely believe that this is the only way Ripple can actually succeed. The system's security relies on you trusting servers that *aren't* under common control. It is designed to be trustworthy only because it is decentralized. It is not useful if you can't trust it.