[...]
Now, I indeed remember the original ripple web-of-trust proposal being as gmaxwell described. The "new" system seems to be something else, and I echo people's concerns expressed in this thread and do not see how they have been resolved to any satisfaction. It may be unintentional on the part of the ripple developers, but something seems fishy or opaque about it (at least at this point in time), and it looks like a commercial rather than a community project.
To me, it looks like it is
both a commercial and community project. Is that a paradox? Not necessarily.
It looks like the
pre-mined pre-issued XRP are a way for the developers/founders to monetize their work. That's fair enough in my opinion, even though they overdid it by keeping such a large share.
I too would have preferred a "pure" community project, but the commercial element won't stop me from using Ripple.
I'm happy that
someone is working hard at making this idea happen. At least the XRP pre-issuing is giving the developers a motivation to keep working at it. I prefer an imperfect Ripple that actually happens in the real world than a perfect, idealistic Ripple that languishes as an idea on a mailing list for 10 years.
All this discussion about the XRP price is petty. Speculators are gonna speculate. There isn't much anyone can do about that in a free market, not even the Ripple founders. Who cares if there is hoarding of XRP? Who cares if there are XRP bubbles?
It terms of Ripple functionality, none of that matters. Neither does it matter that a single entity holds 80% of XRP. That does not make them a "central bank". Even if OpenCoin held 99% of XRP, once Ripple transitions to a community project, this will not allow them to "buy" consensus or to block certain transactions. Maybe they can manipulate or crash the XRP market. Who cares? That will only affect people who transact in XRP, not those who transact in other currencies. And the ability to transact in arbitrary currencies is the main selling point of Ripple. The XRP are just an auxiliary tool.