Quote from: hypostatization on March 11, 2014, 05:01:46 PM

Everything is in the ledger, just like the blockchain.

I've already went through this with another Ripple supporter here:

Quote from: acoindr on March 03, 2014, 04:02:16 AM

Quote from: Sukrim on March 03, 2014, 03:50:32 AM

Quote from: acoindr on March 03, 2014, 03:37:33 AM

I really like the idea of Ripple, but the current problem I have with it is there seems to be no way to verify how many ripples exist.

https://ripple.com/wiki/RPC_API#account_info
https://ripple.com/tools/info
You're free to verify this and more also by running your own node.

Yes, I've looked over some of Ripple's documentation. How does a node verify the amount of XRP in existence? From what I could see the basis is supposedly a "genesis ledger" as opposed to a genesis block, but there seems to be no way to access the genesis ledger.

Quote from: Sukrim on March 03, 2014, 03:50:32 AM

There is also a bunched together amount released by RippleLabs (https://www.ripplelabs.com/xrp-distribution/) with no further/cryptographically verifiable proof behind that.

That's a numeric statement posted on a website. That doesn't cut it.

Quote from: Sukrim on March 03, 2014, 03:50:32 AM

It looks like about in the right ballpark though, from looking at the distribution of XRP between wallets atm.

That doesn't cut it either. It needs to be mathematically verifiable.

Quote from: Sukrim on March 03, 2014, 04:17:43 AM

The oldest available ledger is #32570 (with about 100 entries) so this is currently the genesis one, the older ones are presumably lost or at least not available until JoelKatz finally publishes the transactions that took place in these first 1 1/2 weeks so these ledgers can be restored back to 0. Since then there is a unbroken hashed chain of headers (also cryptographically linked to the transactions and account state at each point of time). Nodes verify this by getting the most recent finalized ledger and continuing from there. Since transactions in Ripple only operate on account balances, not on inputs like Bitcoin, and you can only branch at the top not "mine" on an earlier "block", there is no explicit need for keeping history, not even headers.

Quote from: acoindr on March 03, 2014, 04:26:28 AM

Quote from: Sukrim on March 03, 2014, 04:17:43 AM

Since transactions in Ripple only operate on account balances, not on inputs like Bitcoin, and you can only branch at the top not "mine" on an earlier "block", there is no explicit need for keeping history, not even headers.

There is no explicit need for keeping history... So there is no need for keeping a ledger, in other words.