> Yes, but is there something that Ripple is doing here that could not be done by any non-blockchain distributed system?
Yes... as far as I'm aware, most (all?) other non-blockchain distributed ledgers require complete trust between parties. Its hard enough for two banks to trust each other completely, let alone all banks to trust all other banks. The old way of doing things is to either trust a central bank completely, which is easier to do, but far from distributed, or to trust a third party with a days worth of transfers and settling at the end of the day. Still not distributed, but requires less trust.
> The chief value in blockchain seems to be in getting people to agree to do something at all.
Exactly!
Blockchain technology is essentially nothing more than a cryptographically secure distributed ledger. There's probably other ways of having a secured distributed ledger without technically being a blockchain, and I'd be interested in hearing about them, but I'm not aware of their existence at the moment. Either way, I'm not sure why there's so much pushback on blockchains?
Doesn't it just require trust of a single party for settlements (or any number of independent settlements parties)? Which you still sort of require in the ripple model because ripple owns a crap ton of it's own coinage (60% of the pot).
> Doesn't it just require trust of a single party for settlements
If you're talking about two banks... There are thousands of banks out there all with varying levels of trust, and those banks all need to transfer funds between each other on a daily basis. Most banks only have direct relationships with a handful of other banks.
> Which you still sort of require in the ripple model because ripple owns a crap ton of it's own coinage (60% of the pot).
Yes, they own 60% of XRP available, but if you're settling a transfer between USD/EUR then you only need to trust ripple for the length of time for that settlement to happen.
> Yes, they own 60% of XRP available, but if you're settling a transfer between USD/EUR then you only need to trust ripple for the length of time for that settlement to happen.
Which for a bank would be all the damn day because they wouldn't just be doing one transaction every 2 months.
Yes... as far as I'm aware, most (all?) other non-blockchain distributed ledgers require complete trust between parties. Its hard enough for two banks to trust each other completely, let alone all banks to trust all other banks. The old way of doing things is to either trust a central bank completely, which is easier to do, but far from distributed, or to trust a third party with a days worth of transfers and settling at the end of the day. Still not distributed, but requires less trust.
> The chief value in blockchain seems to be in getting people to agree to do something at all.
Exactly!
Blockchain technology is essentially nothing more than a cryptographically secure distributed ledger. There's probably other ways of having a secured distributed ledger without technically being a blockchain, and I'd be interested in hearing about them, but I'm not aware of their existence at the moment. Either way, I'm not sure why there's so much pushback on blockchains?