Re: MasterCoin: New Protocol Layer Starting From “The Exodus Address”
what do you think about ripple ? Do you think it's a competitor for mastercoin ?
I think that Ripple is a powerful idea that has been badly mismanaged, and yes, it competes with MSC. Their focus on Peter owes Paul owes Sam owes Jake debt chains causes their true killer features to get lost in the noise. Nobody cares about collapsing debt chains, but distributed exchange is incredibly important. Perhaps they have fixed this marketing snafu (I haven't checked lately).
I also disagree with their XRP distribution model, and I am doubtful about the case for long-term appreciation of that currency. (Trivia: the MasterCoin giveaway thread was funded with MSC purchased with BTC I got for selling XRP I received from an early Ripple giveaway)
Finally, I think their system is way too complex, not sufficiently decentralized, not sufficiently open source (this may have changed since last I looked), and not flexible enough for other cool things people want to do with distributed currencies.
Other than that, I love Ripple.
You should check it again. Totally open-source since a month . I agree they are not good at communicating but their main aim is not bitcoin community but exchange platform like zipzap and future gateways. With more gateways and nodes the ripple network will be distributed enough to be fair and honest.
New features are coming with "contracts". I don't think it's too complex, it can easily be integrated and someone could use a ripple wallet without even know about it. About flexibility I couldn't really tell I'm not competent enough to say.
XRP distribution model is particular but you don't need xrp to use ripple network (mm ok actually you need less than 1$ to fund a wallet...). About long-term appreciation I think it may appreciate if the network find more gateways and plateforms that use ripple. Otherwise it may also disappear (just like bitcoin or mastercoin actually since there's not real economy backing them).