The technology that launched Bitcoin could help broker-dealers cut costs. The catch: it could equally eat into revenue by automating services they currently charge for. Given the formidable obstacles to widespread adoption, it may prove to be as much a curse as a blessing.
We’ve already invested in over 50 Bitcoin companies, now we’re looking for Ethereum companies too.
Quelle: Boost VC Is Now Investing In Products Built Using Ethereum — Boost VC — Medium
Blockchain: regulatory technology or technology to regulate? Wednesday 2 March 2016, 12.30 – 16.00 European Parliament Brussels, Room PHS 7C 050 An event hosted by MEP Marietje […]
Quelle: Blockchain: regulatory technology or technology to regulate?
Ethereum has been a hot topic in the cryptocurrency world over the past few weeks as it’s been climbing the market cap ladder.
Quelle: Ethereum Now ‚Self-Sufficient for 4.5 Years‘ Says Buterin as Price Climbs – Bitcoin News
Ripple Labs has issued a Gateway Bulletin on the Partial Payment flag which describes the flag and best practices around balancing activity on and off the ledger. The tfPartialPayment flag is set by the sender to specify a payment where the beneficiary can receive less than the specified amount.
Gateways are encouraged to implement best practices and understand the Partial Payment flag to mitigate errors that can result in fraud if undetected.
To view this bulletin, please visit: https://wiki.ripple.com/
Chris Larsen (Co-founder and CEO) and Greg Kidd (Chief Risk Officer)—imagery courtesy of Money2020
In less than two weeks, Ripple Labs will be joining thousands of industry and thought leaders at Money20/20 in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Of the 7,000+ attendees, there will be “670 CEOs, from over 2,300 companies and 60 countries.” The team is looking forward to build on the success of Sibos earlier this month, where the Ripple narrative really picked up momentum toward industry acceptance.
Speaking schedule:
- Greg Kidd (Chief Risk Officer): “Cryptocurrencies & Consumer Protection Issues”—Sunday, Nov. 2 at 1:00-1:45pm
- Chris Larsen (Co-founder and CEO): “Remittances: Retail, Electronic & Cryptocurrencies”—Sunday, Nov. 2 at 3:00-3:45pm
If you’re interested in learning how Ripple is driving down cross-border transaction costs for banks like Fidor, please contact us at to schedule a meeting with a Ripple Labs representative.
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Ripple Labs CTO Stefan Thomas and software engineer Evan Schwartz present Codius.
As part of an ongoing initiative to better educate the broader community about Ripple technology, behind the scenes developments, as well as our take on the industry at large, Ripple Labs will be releasing a series a tech talks, the first of which is an introduction to Codius.
The tech talk was presented by CTO Stefan Thomas and software engineer Evan Schwartz to a full house on November 20, 2014 at Around the World in 5 Seconds, a special night of demos and celebration at Ripple Labs headquarters in downtown San Francisco.
Codius is a platform developed by Ripple Labs that enables smart contracts technology. But from a broader perspective, it’s a framework for developing distributed applications, what we call “smart programs.” In this tech talk, you’ll learn about:
- Cryptocurrencies and smart contracts
- Codius as the ecosystem for smart programs
- The future of autonomous applications
Learn more about Codius:
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Superintendent Ben Lawsky hasn’t shied away from maintaining an open dialogue with the community.
While the early days of the web provide an intuitive roadmap for how the emergence of digital payment protocols and the ecosystem that surrounds them will evolve over time, there’s one defining difference between the evolving state of finance today and the Internet of the 80s: Regulations.
There’s a lot more at stake when transferring value versus information. It’s why finance is the most heavily regulated industry on the planet. It’s also why the internet-of-value has taken such a long time to materialize. The bar is just that much higher.
As these emerging technologies push us further into uncharted territory, navigating these regulatory waters has become a core component of our mission here at Ripple Labs. And as creators of an open source protocol, we’re committed to being transparent about that process. To provide insight on our perspective, we’re publishing our BitLicense comments (pdf), which we recently submitted to regulators.
The Ripple Labs perspective
Our position on regulations is straightforward. An effective regulatory framework opens the door to mainstream adoption. The goal is to provide necessary protections for end users without stifling innovation by burdening developers and small businesses. Instead, smart regulations can level the playing field, legitimize a burgeoning industry, and empower entrepreneurs.
But getting regulations right is an immense task. That’s why it’s pertinent that Ripple Labs works regularly with regulators, our numerous stakeholders, and the industry-at-large in helping to collectively shape the rules that will define the way forward.
BitLicense
It’s incredibly encouraging that the U.S. government appears up to the task with Superintendent Ben Lawsky of the New York State Department of Financial Services leading the way by maintaining an open dialogue and recently, drafting the first proposal of BitLicense, a set of rules that aim to bring clarity to how government officials and businesses deal with cryptocurrencies.
As the only U.S. regulator to step up to the plate—at both state and federal levels—Superintendent Lawsky should be commended for assuming this monumental responsibility. BitLicense elevates the industry as a whole, putting next generation firms in the same club as the big banks. Most of all, throughout Lawsky’s numerous interactions with the community—including his speech at Money20/20 in Las Vegas last month—it’s clear that New York’s first Superintendent of Financial Services not only comprehensively understands and respects the awesome potential of these new technologies but also what’s at stake.
Indeed, the implications of BitLicense will have far broader implications beyond the crypto-community, as Lawsky alluded to during his Vegas keynote, noting that his framework for Bitcoin regulations will eventually serve as a model for all regulated institutions. Along those lines, this isn’t merely about the future of Bitcoin or Ripple, it’s about the future of finance as a whole—one in which the lines between new technologies and the existing system continue to blur.
Again, for his fearless and influential leadership, Lawsky deserves to be commended. Even so, he could do more—especially if he and the rest of the state’s ruling body want New York to become a hub for technological innovation. Below is a summary of our comments and suggestions that we believe could help BitLicense reach its ultimate goals while still maintaining an environment that supports and fosters innovation and small businesses.
Reduce barriers of entry. New York should support developers who need the freedom to build. Costly compliance requirements create huge barriers of entry for small businesses. To accommodate innovation, we suggest a “registration regime” versus a “licensing regime” with a threshold for smaller firms, significantly reducing potential upfront costs and waiting around that often deters new businesses. This way, entrepreneurs can begin the regulatory process in good faith and start their business right away.
Create a level playing field. A key criticism of the initial BitLicense proposal is that it didn’t create a level playing field between cryptocurrencies and everyone else. There are arguments to be made why digital currencies should be held to a higher standard because of their unique properties, but if that’s the case, those arguments need to be explicitly mapped out, where each special feature is properly defined relative to existing rulesets. With the initial draft, it’s often unclear why increased controls are being implemented only for new technologies.
The rules regarding information security is one example, which requires third-party code verification. In this case, rather than opting for a more balanced approach, Lawsky went from 0-60 with baseline regulations. While it may be true that this new rule could very well be a “coming attraction for all banks,” emerging technologies shouldn’t have to serve as the canary in the coal mine and solely assume the cost of experimental rules. If a new rule is believed to be beneficial to the public’s interests, it should be applied to all relevant parties on day one, rather than arbitrarily to just the new kids on the block. Otherwise, BitLicense undermines a sense of fairness by appearing to favor established interests.
The overall scope is too broad. Such is the nature of emerging technologies with few past precedents—they can be difficult to properly define. But even under that context, the way BitLicense defines these new technologies is far too general and vague. If the purpose of regulations is to provide clarity, the proposal as it currently exists risks further muddying the waters by leaving ample room for subjective interpretation. The first step then is to provide a concise definition of the technology at hand. The approach we prefer is to highlight the technology’s fundamental distinctions. In the case of virtual currencies, this is the first time we’ve seen assets exist in a digital context (as opposed to liabilities).
Beyond reaching consensus on a proper definition, we believe that limiting the scope of these new regulations requires a more balanced and organic approach to how we assess risk. It’s logical to focus on the risks added by new technologies, but it’s equally as important to consider existing risks that innovation helps to mitigate. In that sense, BitLicense should not only temper negative characteristics, but also foster and expand positive ones. As it stands, the former is, at times, over the top, while the latter is often lacking.
The way forward
Overall, the development of BitLicense represents a huge step in the right direction, despite being imperfect as regulators and industry participants continue to work together toward a meaningful and mutually beneficial consensus. That governments are dedicating these resources toward legitimizing new businesses is a huge stamp of approval for technologies that only a few short years ago didn’t even exist.
At Ripple Labs, we’re deeply cognizant of our responsibility to our partners, our community, and the industry, and we take great pride in participating in this ongoing process, one we believe will have a huge impact on our ability to deliver these breakthrough technologies to people around the world.
That last part is key. Even if the U.S. will, at times, lead the way, the scope and reach of Ripple and other digital payment protocols in general transcends borders. As such, our regulatory work extends to a global scale. Last Friday, our team submitted a letter to the Australian Parliament regarding the regulation of digital currencies, which is available on their website for download. (We are submission #21.) We are also in the process of engaging with other foreign regulators.
As always—as an ongoing conversation and an evolving process—we are open to any and all feedback. We look forward to hearing from you.
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The Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) which maintains Stellar, a network built on a modified version of the Ripple code base, recently published a post claiming flaws in the Ripple consensus algorithm. We take any reports about possible security issues very seriously and after reviewing the information conclude that there is no threat to the continued operation of the Ripple network. We’d like to share our thoughts.
Quoting the post in question:
Issue 1: Sacrificing safety over liveness and fault tolerance—potential for double spends
The Fischer Lynch Paterson impossibility result (FLP) states that a deterministic asynchronous consensus system can have at most two of the following three properties: safety (results are valid and identical at all nodes), guaranteed termination or liveness (nodes that don’t fail always produce a result), and fault tolerance (the system can survive the failure of one node at any point). This is a proven result.
This is correct.
Any distributed consensus system on the Internet must sacrifice one of these features.
This is potentially misleading. The FLP result shows that no system can provide those guarantees and reach consensus in bounded time. Real-world implementations of consensus like Paxos and Ripple however use probability to achieve safety, liveness and fault tolerance within a given time limit with very high likelihood.
If consensus is not achieved in this timeframe, the algorithm will retry and once again achieve consensus with very high likelihood and so on. In statistical terms, consensus will eventually be reached with probability 1, satisfying liveness under a probabilistic model. In practice, progress is usually made every round and two or more rounds are very rarely needed.
This means that distributed consensus systems like the Ripple network and Google’s Spanner database exist and can provide extremely high availability if configured correctly.
The existing Ripple/Stellar consensus algorithm is implemented in a way that favors fault tolerance and termination over safety.
This is incorrect. We have not reviewed Stellar’s modified version of Ripple consensus, but as far as the Ripple consensus algorithm is concerned, the protocol provides safety and fault tolerance assuming the validators are configured correctly. For a detailed proof, please see our consensus white paper.
This means it prioritizes ledger closes and availability over everyone actually agreeing on what the ledger is—thus opening up several potential risk scenarios.
This is incorrect. If a quorum cannot be reached, validators will retry until connectivity has been restored.
Issue 2: Provable correctness
Prof. David Mazières, head of Stanford’s Secure Computing Group, reviewed the Ripple/Stellar consensus system and reached the conclusion that the existing algorithm was unlikely to be safe under all circumstances.
We look forward to reading Prof. Mazières’ findings once they are published.
Based [on] these findings, we decided to create a new consensus system with provable correctness.
As mentioned before, a proof of Ripple’s correctness is available in the form of the Ripple consensus white paper.
As Ripple Labs’ chief cryptographer and the original developer of Ripple consensus David Schwartz pointed out yesterday, there cannot be two conflicting majority sets without overlap. For bootstrapping with a small set of trusted validators, it is appropriate to use a crash-recovery fault model, meaning a simple majority such as three out of five is sufficient. In other words, it is impossible for the Ripple network to experience an unintentional ledger fork as Stellar’s did because our nodes require votes from a majority of validators. In the future, we will generally recommend a supermajority greater than two thirds to account for Byzantine faults (validators that act arbitrarily or maliciously), but otherwise the same concepts apply.
In either case, anyone wishing to join a specific set of mutually consenting validators in the Ripple topology can do so by configuring their local Ripple node appropriately. We recognize the immense task of building the world’s first global consensus graph. It is a hard problem, but not an impossible one. Like the transition from Arpanet to the distributed routing topology of the modern internet, it will require time, education and a great deal of caution. But thanks to our amazing partners and colleagues, we are ready to tackle this challenge.
The Ripple network and its distributed ledger have used the Ripple consensus protocol to operate reliably for two years and currently manage $ 1.4 million in daily volume. We continue to invest in scaling Ripple to support the world’s cross-border transactions with bank partners in the U.S. and Europe actively integrating today.
As interest in Ripple increases around the world, the ecosystem continues to steadily expand into untapped markets. Recently, Minsung Park, a former lawyer and technology whiz, launched Pax Moneta, South Korea’s first Ripple gateway.
Like many innovators building on the Ripple protocol, Minsung’s history and breadth of experience is rich and unique, having helped to draft laws and write software that spurred the mass adoption of public key infrastructure within his home country.
“My parents wanted me to be a lawyer, so I became a lawyer,” said Minsung, who has helped translate various Ripple documents into Korean, such as the Ripple Primer (Korean). “But my basic instinct was toward science. It was my basic instinct that introduced me to the Internet. In my body and my soul, I am focused on this sort of scientific thinking.”
Minsung sees the potential of Ripple to help better connect his country and its citizens to the broader economic machine, reducing friction between neighboring markets, like China and Japan, and beyond.
Tell us about yourself!
I was born in 1968 so I am 46. Sometimes I forget my age. I majored in law, with a focus on criminal law and information law. At the time, I remember the Internet was just introduced to Korea while I was in graduate school.
The concept quickly piqued my interest so I started digging. “What is the Internet?” I wanted to know. I discovered Mozilla. At the time, I was able to use a phone to connect to the Internet. One of the first things I did was create an Internet group at my university as part of the computer science and law departments, which ran a web server.
I completed my law degree, but because of the Internet, I was, in fact, interested in programming. I ended up working at a government agency, the Korean Information Society Development Institute or KISDI. One of my primary responsibilities was to help formulate a law regarding the Korean Signature Act (1999) based on a public key system or PKI.
This was how I first came across the idea of a cryptocurrency, around 1996 or 1997, but I didn’t yet fully comprehend the meaning of currency or cryptocurrency. As time went on, I continued my research on the idea of the cryptographic key and kept on learning programming, including languages like C and C++. I ended up creating software for law firms working with government agencies, such as the Korea National Police Agency and the Korea Intelligence Services, as well as other organizations using special cryptography with Western countries. Over time, many companies would integrate PKI, both for commercial and government websites in Korea.
I also ran a trading and development company with a focus in futures and options so I had an opportunity to live in the UK for around three years. Through that experience, I saw that the banking systems of Western countries were very developed and there was a good chance we could introduce these systems to Korea.
Three years ago, I returned to Korea, where I continued my study of cryptography, programming, and electronic trading. That’s when I read an article about Bitcoin, which brought back the idea of a cryptocurrency that I came across during my time with KISDI. I ran to the closest bookstore to learn more. During that search, I found Ripple, another way to transfer value digitally.
That’s when I started working on and developing a Ripple gateway, Pax Moneta, which is the first Ripple gateway in South Korea. Pax Moneta means “peace of money,” a play on words, originating from the term “Pax Romana” or “Pax America”
That’s quite a journey! What ended up attracting you to Ripple?
The reason why I created a Ripple company is simply because the technology is just great. It makes sense. In a way, Bitcoin is about replacing currency like the U.S. Dollar. On the other hand, Ripple is complementary and can help exchange any currency, KRW, CNY, GBP, or USD. That means Ripple can work with governments instead of against them. Personally, I will still use Bitcoin, but Ripple can be used as a method to help exchange value quickly between many countries.
So I have a lot of belief in Ripple, which I feel is supported by my background. I majored in law, but my basic instinct was always based on natural sciences. That’s why I love Ripple and I’m lucky because I think I can understand both areas.
What sort of challenges did you face?
I tried to build a rippled server. It was very difficult, but ultimately, I succeeded. Then I had to figure out how to use rippled, ripple-lib, and gatewayd.
One issue is that Node.js and Angular.js were very new to Koreans. Most developers in Korea are using Java. I couldn’t find a book in Korean for Angular.js so this was a challenge, but I was able to find English resources on the Internet. It was often difficult to sleep. If I’m interested in something, I cannot see anything but this single passion.
After a bit of studying, I was able to better understand gatewayd and ripple-lib. A few months ago, my gateway was nearly ready so I contacted the International Ripple Business Association or IRBA.
Congratulations, that’s a huge accomplishment! Is the Ripple technology being embraced locally?
There have been some difficulties, primarily because most Koreans don’t know the existence of Ripple. We now have a gateway, but many Koreans don’t understand what a gateway is. So one thing we have to do is create a more intuitive Ripple client on top of gatewayd for Koreans to use.
Tell us about your team!
At the moment, we have four people to cover programming, design, and marketing, but we are actively recruiting. We’re still small. We’re a startup.
Since one of the main challenges for Pax Moneta is Ripple mindshare in Korea, do you have an explicit marketing strategy?
As you know, Korea is located between China and Japan. Traditionally, KRW and USD has been essential to the Korean economy. I want to help Korea become a bridge between the USA and China. So in the long view, Pax Moneta should focus on these two countries.
There are many Koreans who own factories in China and there are also many Chinese people who want to come to Korea so there is high demand for exchange between KRW and CNY.
What’s the regulatory climate surrounding these technologies like in Korea?
There was a recent government petition on virtual currencies. In general, the view seems to be that virtual currencies are convenient, like Ripple, which is fast and operates within the law, but the price is not stable. So at the moment, the Bank of Korea does not have any explicit plan to support it.
As you may know, in Korea, the government plays a significant role in supporting companies so the issues of regulation are very important. But I believe it will be similar to the adoption of the Internet. Today, the Internet is used by the Korean government. In the future, I think Ripple will be used, too. When my son and my grandchildren become parents, they will use virtual currencies.
The Korean government does block certain things, but in general, they want to support innovation, like with AG Pay and Kakao Pay. We’re entering a new era and I think there will be many chances in front of us if we are prepared for the future.
Any final thoughts?
Yes, just this: “If all roads lead to Rome, then all values lead to Ripple.”