It is not an open source project
Wrong, here's the code (again!):
https://github.com/ripple/rippled[...] and it is not even publicly auditable.
Wrong again, every node constantly audits transactions. It is easily auditable and verifiable.
In Bitcoin terms the ledger is something close to a UTXO set in a deterministic data structure, so to run a full node you only need this data (just like in Bitcoin) and history is kinda optional. Something similar to this approach has been suggested some time ago for Bitcoin too, here's the thread about it:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=88208.0I'm not sure how else to explain it, but if you deal with balances it does not matter what happened before a certain point of time ...
How in the world do you figure that?
Actually
anything dealing with money involves transactions and balances. That's how any money system works.
You, Sukrim, have a dollar balance. You have a Ripple balance. You have a yen balance, and you have a bitcoin balance. You have balances for other things too which you may not have ever heard of. Now many of your balances may be zero (e.g. your yen balance etc.) but you have a balance, which is the sum of all the units of that currency you have in your possession. Whenever you make a tranasaction, i.e. trade with someone your balance changes.
So far so good...
Now you're trying to say dealing with Ripple balances means it doesn't matter what happened in the system before a point of time? Then how do you know anyone's balance?!? The whole point of any money system is accounting for peoples' balances. People want to increase their balance so they can buy more expensive things (make larger trades).
So within Ripple there must be a way to know all balances (this exists with Bitcoin).
I think here is the issue that I probably did not explain too good:
You actually
do know everyone's individual balance at ledger 32570!
It is not even that large, here it is in JSON format (every entry on a seperate line for better readability):
http://pastebin.com/P24vC3VfEvery transaction since then is known and the result of applying them can be calculated and verified independently.