Whitepaper:
https://interledger.org/interledger.pdf

Discussion:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1202163.0

Basically the idea is to make payment networks interoperable. If it gets adopted it would considerably flatten the world of payments. Think of VISA's slogan "Everywhere you want to be". Their whole sales pitch (or rather the reason you're stuck with them) is that they have the biggest reach. By connecting networks together we even the playing field. It wouldn't matter if you're using PayPal, Bitcoin or FedoraCoin - they are all accepted everywhere.

If that all sounds too good to be true, consider that I'm writing this on my Webpass connection - an internet provider that I absolutely love. Yet Bitcointalk is hosted with a totally different Internet provider. Why doesn't it work like that for payments?

Creating a world where there are free and open payments is our mission statement. It's the reason we do anything. - It was also the reason I got into Bitcoin in the first place.


Yeah, that's why we got the process started early. But I agree that adoption has to happen in parallel.

Interledger came out of our work on Codius - basically we wanted a way that you could pay smart contract hosts. But we thought that different hosts would want to accept different currencies, so we didn't just want to integrate with one cryptocurrency or another. We wanted a solution where the host (i.e. merchant) could accept whatever they wanted and the user could pay with whatever they wanted.

Interledger is a protocol that does that. The merchant and the user have to agree on a cryptographic primitive (e.g. SHA256) and their ledgers have to support escrow based on that primitive (Bitcoin does) and then they can transact safely via connectors that anyone can run and that are completely untrusted.

Just finished an audit of the Huobi Chinese Bitcoin exchange. Please see the report below.

As always, an audit does not constitute an endorsement and it does not address any risks outside of present insolvency. It's also not infallible, exchanges can borrow money or ask others to sign their audit message. Finally, until we can implement fully zero-knowledge, cryptographically provable audits, you have to trust the auditor, i.e. me, to have done my job correctly.

Also same as always, I did not receive any compensation for the audit and I did it in my free time. I requested the exchange donate any fees they would have paid me to a charity of my choice: Ludvig von Mises Institute For Austrian Economics Inc. in Auburn, Alabama

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA512


AUDITOR: Stefan Thomas
AUDITED ENTITY: Huobi Technology Co., Ltd., https://www.huobi.com
ROOT HASH: c4d8c294ee91c8d61fc12f55750346eb4106f37effacdbc296320310bab1daf1
BLOCK HEIGHT: 317899
RESULT: >100% reserves


August 28, 2014
San Francisco

This post is to report on an audit I performed for the Huobi Bitcoin exchange on August 28th, 2014 from the Ripple Labs office here in San Francisco. (Note that I have performed this audit privately in my spare time and not as an employee at Ripple Labs Inc.) I've not received any payment for this audit - my personal goal with this is to help improve the stability of and confidence in the math-based currency industry overall.


Statement
=========

The audit process is designed to allow the auditor - in this case me, Stefan Thomas - to verify that the total amount of bitcoins held by Huobi matches the amount required to cover an anonymized set of customer balances. I am attesting to the root hash of a merkle tree containing all balances that were considered in the audit. If you are a customer of Huobi, you'll be able to verify using open-source tools that your balance at the time of the audit is part of this root hash. If it is and if you believe that I am trustworthy, then you can be confident that your balance was matched by an equivalent or greater amount of bitcoins in the block chain at the time of the audit.

The most difficult part of an audit is normally to verify that the exchange is not under-reporting the number and balances of account holders. With this approach each account holder can verify that they were considered in the audit. At the same time it maintains absolute privacy for customers, the auditor only sees anonymized balances and the general public only sees the overall level of reserves.

Note that there are limitations to this type of audit. It does not verify an exchange's fiat assets and liabilities or other aspects of their balance sheet. It is also difficult to prove definitively that the bitcoins in question are actually owned by the exchange versus being on loan for instance.

In order to reduce reliance on the auditor, the audit should be repeated using different auditors at different times.


Claims
======

Claim 1: Huobi controls a certain amount of Bitcoins.

Proof: Huobi provided a JSON file with a list of their Bitcoin addresses and balances. I used the `cryptoshi audit` command in libcoin to verify the JSON file against a copy of the block chain.

The version of libcoin used was commit 5424505e2fb5866be96e9af35874cf9c289e3ccd.

Here is the audit code used:

https://github.com/libcoin/libcoin/blob/5424505e2fb5866be96e9af35874cf9c289e3ccd/applications/cryptoshi/cryptoshi.cpp#L638-690


Claim 2: The amount from claim 1 is greater than the amount contained in the root hash of balances.

Proof: Huobi provided a JSON file containing a set of anonymized user balances. I used my own tool "easy-audit" to calculate the reserve ratio and root hash.

The version of easy-audit used was commit 663c38be6767175764d13d249a6c18905ebae76f

Available at: https://github.com/justmoon/easy-audit

Here is the audit code used:

https://github.com/justmoon/easy-audit/blob/663c38be6767175764d13d249a6c18905ebae76f/lib/audit_reporter.js#L10-31

The tool's output was:

ASSET OWNER: huobi.com
BLOCK HEIGHT: 317899
ROOT HASH: c4d8c294ee91c8d61fc12f55750346eb4106f37effacdbc296320310bab1daf1
RESERVE RATIO: 103.52%

The actual holdings were 3.52% higher than the required holdings, meaning Huobi had greater than 100% reserves at the audit block height.

// Stefan Thomas

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Here is the final audit report for the OKCoin audit.

As always, an audit does not constitute an endorsement and it does not address any risks outside of present insolvency. It's also not infallible, exchanges can borrow money or ask others to sign their audit message. Finally, until we can implement fully zero-knowledge, cryptographically provable audits, you have to trust the auditor, i.e. me, to have done my job correctly.

Also same as always, I did not receive any compensation for the audit and I did it in my free time. I requested the exchange donate any fees they would have paid me to a charity of my choice: Ludvig von Mises Institute For Austrian Economics Inc. in Auburn, Alabama

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA512


AUDITOR: Stefan Thomas
AUDITED ENTITY: OKCoin Inc., https://www.okcoin.cn
ROOT HASH: dbb26444331293a04b289ba632b8f942b550d6873fed1afd6c53fca52825d1c7
BLOCK HEIGHT: 316837
RESULT: >100% reserves


August 21, 2014
San Francisco

This post is to report on an audit I performed for the OKCoin Bitcoin exchange on August 21st, 2014 from my home office here in San Francisco. I've not received any payment for this audit - my personal goal with this is to help improve the stability of and confidence in the math-based currency industry overall.


Statement
=========

The audit process is designed to allow the auditor - in this case me, Stefan Thomas - to verify that the total amount of bitcoins held by OKCoin matches the amount required to cover an anonymized set of customer balances. I am attesting to the root hash of a merkle tree containing all balances that were considered in the audit. If you are a customer of OKCoin, you'll be able to verify using open-source tools that your balance at the time of the audit is part of this root hash. If it is and if you believe that I am trustworthy, then you can be confident that your balance was matched by an equivalent or greater amount of bitcoins in the block chain at the time of the audit.

The most difficult part of an audit is normally to verify that the exchange is not under-reporting the number and balances of account holders. With this approach each account holder can verify that they were considered in the audit. At the same time it maintains absolute privacy for customers, the auditor only sees anonymized balances and the general public only sees the overall level of reserves.

Note that there are limitations to this type of audit. It does not verify an exchange's fiat assets and liabilities or other aspects of their balance sheet. It is also difficult to prove definitively that the bitcoins in question are actually owned by the exchange versus being on loan for instance.

In order to reduce reliance on the auditor, the audit should be repeated using different auditors at different times.


Claims
======

Claim 1: OKCoin controls a certain amount of Bitcoins.

Proof: OKCoin provided a JSON file with a list of their Bitcoin addresses and balances. I used the `cryptoshi audit` command in libcoin to verify the JSON file against a copy of the block chain.

The version of libcoin used was commit 5424505e2fb5866be96e9af35874cf9c289e3ccd.

Here is the audit code used:

https://github.com/libcoin/libcoin/blob/5424505e2fb5866be96e9af35874cf9c289e3ccd/applications/cryptoshi/cryptoshi.cpp#L638-690


Claim 2: The amount from claim 1 is greater than the amount contained in the root hash of balances.

Proof: OKCoin provided a JSON file containing a set of anonymized user balances. I used my own tool "easy-audit" to calculate the reserve ratio and root hash.

The version of easy-audit used was commit 663c38be6767175764d13d249a6c18905ebae76f

Available at: https://github.com/justmoon/easy-audit

Here is the audit code used:

https://github.com/justmoon/easy-audit/blob/663c38be6767175764d13d249a6c18905ebae76f/lib/audit_reporter.js#L10-31

The tool's output was:

ASSET OWNER: okcoin.cn
BLOCK HEIGHT: 316837
ROOT HASH: dbb26444331293a04b289ba632b8f942b550d6873fed1afd6c53fca52825d1c7
RESERVE RATIO: 104.86%

The actual holdings were 4.86% higher than the required holdings, meaning OKCoin had greater than 100% reserves at the audit block height.

// Stefan Thomas

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Happy to publish today the results of an audit I performed for the Bitfinex exchange. This is similar to the Kraken audit, we simply took some of the feedback on board (hash email address into leaf nodes), improved the security in a few places (balances were anonymized even to me) and streamlined the process some more (presenting easy-audit.)

As always, an audit does not constitute an endorsement and it does not address any risks outside of present insolvency. It's also not infallible, exchanges can borrow money or ask others to sign their audit message. Finally, until we can implement fully zero-knowledge, cryptographically provable audits, you have to trust the auditor, i.e. me, to have done my job correctly.

Also same as last time, I did not receive any compensation for the audit and I did it in my free time.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

=====BEGIN AUDIT REPORT=====

AUDITOR: Stefan Thomas
AUDITED ENTITY: iFinex, Inc., https://www.bitfinex.com
ROOT HASH: 37c49d606c61aab140726265099992c3dd0fba30e1ce1a8a04f0e56cec6dc19f
BLOCK HEIGHT: 294378
RESULT: >100% reserves


April 6, 2014
San Francisco

This post is to report on an audit I performed for the Bitfinex Bitcoin exchange on April 5th and 6th, 2014 from my home office here in San Francisco. I've not received any payment for this audit - my personal goal with this is to help improve the stability of and confidence in the math-based currency industry overall.


Statement
=========

The audit process is designed to allow the auditor - in this case me, Stefan Thomas - to verify that the total amount of bitcoins held by Bitfinex matches the amount required to cover an anonymized set of customer balances. I am attesting to is the root hash of a merkle tree containing all balances that were considered in the audit. If you are a customer of Bitfinex, you'll be able to verify using open-source tools that your balance at the time of the audit is part of this root hash. If it is and if you believe that I am trustworthy, then you can be confident that your balance was covered by 100% reserves at the time of the audit.

Compared to audits performed by other exchanges, this approach is very strict while still maintaining absolute privacy for customers. The most difficult part of an audit is normally to verify that the exchange is not under-reporting the number and balances of account holders. With this approach each account holder can verify that they were considered in the audit.

Trust in this type of audit still requires trust in the auditor. For now, this will rest on my shoulders, but Bitfinex have expressed interest in doing regular audits with different auditors each time. This serves to renew the audit and also to increase the confidence in the audit process and the validity of the result.


Claims
======

Claim 1: Bitfinex controls a certain amount of Bitcoins.

Proof: Bitfinex provided a JSON file with a list of their Bitcoin addresses and balances. I used the `cryptoshi audit` command in libcoin to verify the JSON file against a copy of the block chain.

The version of libcoin used was commit e913a46fd481236f573001abbc879d89595d5fef.

Here is the audit code used:

https://github.com/libcoin/libcoin/blob/e913a46fd481236f573001abbc879d89595d5fef/applications/cryptoshi/cryptoshi.cpp#L638-692


Claim 2: The amount from claim 1 is greater than the amount contained in the root hash of balances.

Proof: Bitfinex provided a JSON file containing a set of anonymized user balances. I used my own tool "easy-audit" to calculate the reserve ratio and root hash.

The version of easy-audit used was commit 8dc5882c1d40f5ab9bbea14778cd1abadce6e459

Available at: https://github.com/justmoon/easy-audit

Here is the audit code used:

https://github.com/justmoon/easy-audit/blob/8dc5882c1d40f5ab9bbea14778cd1abadce6e459/proof.js#L21-45

The tool's output was:

ASSET OWNER: bitfinex.com
BLOCK HEIGHT: 294378
ROOT HASH: 37c49d606c61aab140726265099992c3dd0fba30e1ce1a8a04f0e56cec6dc19f
RESERVE RATIO: 102.82%

The actual holdings were slightly (< 3%) above the required holdings, meaning Bitfinex had greater than 100% reserves at the audit block height.

// Stefan Thomas

=====END AUDIT REPORT=====

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The people who hacked the forum potentially compromised a large number of forum accounts. Until we know more, it doesn't seem smart to give away free money based on forum accounts.

The giveaway has been suspended for the time being.

Hey all!

It's my great pleasure to announce the release of the rippled p2p node source-code, the code that implements the Ripple protocol and powers the Ripple payment network. In conjunction with the open-sourcing we're also announcing that OpenCoin Inc. will change its name to Ripple Labs Inc. That latter part is mostly because the old name was confusing and required explanation. We hope the new name is a bit more self-explanatory - we're the place that Ripple came out of and we'll continue to experiment with and develop Ripple technology.

For those of you who are less technical, the significance of our announcement is that Ripple is not another altcoin. All the protocols and data formats have evolved independently of Bitcoin. Our consensus process uses peering (kinda like the Internet itself) instead of mining. The ledger is a data structure that describes the current state of the network as a merkle tree (this has the same effect as the merkle tree of unspent outputs proposals that have come up within the Bitcoin community.) The time between ledgers is adaptive rather than fixed. The current implementation supports holding deposit contracts - balances representating currencies other than the native currency. And we support the trading of these currencies in the network - as one atomic transaction, even across multiple conversions. The Ripple ledger is a general purpose data store and we plan to enable you to program the network freely via contracts.

It feels weird that it falls upon me to announce the open-sourcing of this code, since aside from a tiny fix here or there I wrote none of it. But I have worked closely with the people who did and they have completely changed my perspective on what's possible. I remember promoting Bitcoin to blank stares three years ago and now talking to bitcoiners about Ripple I often feel the same way. I hope that over the next year, starting from today, we can change that - and you'll be able to see Ripple as we do.

I want to address a few questions that I know will come up:

1. Forks

People will fork the network pretty much instantly (as soon as they can figure out our config files ), so does that worry me re: job security? Of course. But that's the whole point of open-sourcing: It's one thing we can do to help keep us honest. I believe as long as we continue to live up to our promises, work hard and provide value to users, they will continue to use our network. And in doing so they're supporting our effort to build out the software and extend the network through any and all means available until all XRP are sold or given away.

I don't believe in closed-source, I don't believe in copyright, but I do believe in supporting the artists, the developers and entrepreneurs who make things happen. We have a growing team of people with big ideas and ambitious plans. So please consider using the original network so we can continue to develop amazing features and integrate every payment system on the face of the planet.

One final request for those planning to fork: If you do fork, please come up with a unique name for your network and a different currency code than XRP. A little search and replace won't kill you and you'll make life a lot easier and less confusing for both our users and your own.


2. Decentralization

Whether the code is open-source or not has nothing to do with whether Ripple is decentralized or not. As far as the original network is concerned we will continue to recommend our own validators for the time being. Running the core group of validators lets us close security holes much more quickly, which is very important at least until major feature development is completed. The last of these major features left is contracts.

So to recap, the general plan is to focus on contracts next and once their API is reasonably stable focus on building out the tools and testing needed to move to a fully distributed network topology.

That said, we do encourage interested parties to start running validators immediately - this is your chance to build a history and reputation as a reliable validator so people will later be more likely to add you to their UNLs.


3. Bugs

There will be bugs. If they are security-critical, please consider responsible disclosure through bugs@ripple.com. We also have a bounty program for critical bugs.

---

Alright, that leaves only one thing.

https://github.com/ripple/rippled/

Go nuts.

---

Cheers,

Stefan Thomas
CTO, Ripple Labs Inc.

www.ripple.com

PS: Cross-posting this on the Ripple forum as well.

Hey folks,

Ripple has been trucking along quietly behind the scenes - a good part of what we do at the moment is infrastructure for larger companies who want to use Bitcoin or remit money internationally. That said, we're nearing a new phase in our development and there are a number of big announcements coming.

If you're interested in Ripple, consider joining us at the Ripple Developer Conference 2013 in Las Vegas, Nevada. We're part of Money2020, one of the most important fintech conventions in the year with more than 4000 attendees from 1500 companies.

When: October 10th, 2013
Where: ARIA, Resort and Casino; Las Vegas, NV
Price? FREE (seats limited; see registration instructions below)

If you missed the early part of the Bitcointalk giveaway, attending is your chance to make up for it: We'll be giving 50000 XRP each to registered attendees at the event so you have plenty of funds to play with the system.

In order to register, please tweet @ripple and tell us why you want to develop for Ripple. Alternatively, you can also email us at money2020@ripple.com. Available invitations are sent out on a first come, first serve basis.

You can find more information on our blog: Win Free Tickets to the Exclusive Money2020 Ripple Developer Conference 2013 and 50,000 XRP

I wrote a BIP on discovery to go along with BIP 36, just never submitted it: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/User:Justmoon/BIP_Draft:_Custom_Service_Discovery

Since I'm busy with other projects, if anyone wants to take up and/or finish either of these, please do!

Received my payout. Including all previous payouts, I received ~334 BTC. Based on my single 250 BTC, April 2012 investment, I made a ~34% profit (in BTC) or ~3280% (in USD). Not bad for just over a year, not bad at all.

Big props to DeaDTerra for being reliable and trustworthy despite a very difficult environment.

Just to let you guys know - site was down due to a server misconfiguration afaict. Hopefully should be fixed now.

Today somebody asked WeUseCoins support where all the money goes that people invest into Bitcoin. It's actually kind of an interesting question with a lot of facets, so I ended up spending way too much time writing a reply. I thought I'd share it in case anyone is interested.


I glossed over some technical nuances here, before you judge me, keep in mind that this is intended for a novice and that it's an reply to an economic question, not a technical one.

There has been quite some progress in this area since this thread was originally discussed.

Here is a quick write-up regarding what I consider to be best-in-class security for web-based clients:

https://ripple.com/wiki/User:Justmoon/Secure_Bookmarklet

Note that the document above deals only with the code delivery problem (i.e. the server can send you a version of the client that steals your keys). This seems to be the key issue that web wallets need to solve.

Note also that a web client like this actually provides better security in this particular area than a downloadable wallet like bitcoin-qt, because it makes independently verifying the client much quicker and much more user-friendly and it is therefore significantly more likely that any given user will actually bother to do it.

Just came across this and I thought some people here might enjoy it. 

"How the Great Kaan Causeth the Bark of Trees, Made Into Something Like Paper, to Pass for Money All Over his Country"
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Travels_of_Marco_Polo/Book_2/Chapter_24

It's Marco Polo trying to explain paper money to contemporary Europeans.

Here are some of my favorite excerpts:


Fiat money is "alchemy in perfection"!


And the Great Ben causes every year to be made such a vast quantity of this money ...


How convenient!


And the idea caught on!

Hey Saïvann,

Looks fantastic, amazing work! Ok, let's start integrating this.

Here is a quick checklist on what we need to take care of:

- We need to make sure we set up redirects for all old URLs so we don't break any existing links.
- I set up a Github org at github.com/weusecoins and added you as an owner. The repo is now at https://github.com/weusecoins/weusecoins
- I'll set you up with FTP access.
- How do we keep the translated versions up-to-date?

Any other input and thoughts would very welcome! If you're reading this, give us your opinion!

Cheers,

Stefan

The JavaScript client is only a client, it does not act as a node in the peer-to-peer network. The peer-to-peer network is implemented in C++.

I really need to shut up now though.

For me there is no doubt both networks will be complementary. Ripple is obviously influenced by the fact that most of the team members come from a Bitcoin background. Bitcoin-related use cases are very much a priority. That's all I wanna say lest I get in trouble.

What I can tell you is that this project is the most fun I've had at any startup. The team is absolutely amazing and working on something like this and getting paid for it is a dream come true.

(Speaking of which - if you've got the skills, we're hiring.)

As far as the client is concerned, it's already open-sourced, so if you're bored waiting for more details to come out, feel free to check in on our progress: https://github.com/rippleFoundation/ripple-client/commits/master

Hey all,

This is an unofficial post announcing the next San Francisco Bitcoin meetup on the forums, so here goes:

Where: 2415 Mission St. (at 20th & Mission) - Downstairs office space
When: Tuesday, November 27, 2012, 7:00 PM to 10:00 PM
Who: Bring... EVERYONE.

More information and letting us know you're coming:

http://www.meetup.com/San-Francisco-Bitcoin-Social/events/85937822/

I'm in San Francisco at the moment, so I'm very excited to see at lot of you guys in person for the first time!

Cheers,

Stefan