It's all a bit too closed for my liking. The founders have donated 80 billion to OpenCoin - already there's alarm bells - they're keeping back a 20% stake of an entire economy for themselves?!
And then OpenCoin doesn't have a simple or fair way to share out the XRP, nor have they even pledged to distribute all of it, and yet there are even a couple of active gateways in place already? How come I, for example, can't just go ahead and open mine? It all seems stacked against the eventual users, which is a real shame as the overall concept is nothing short of brilliant.
Like with the founders of certain Bitcoin clones, I think their greed may be their undoing.
+1
I read about ripple on wikipedia earlier and had alarm bells ringing when I saw this.
Note that the Ripple protocol itself wouldn't preclude a hierarchical payment structure evolving, it just allows for the possibility of other structures.
If it doesn't preclude a hierarchical structure then one will develop as surely as night follows day