Most promising directions

[Romualdo Grillo]

Among many ideas proposed here in the group, I'm trying to organize a
list of most promising use-cases for Ripple.

http://ripple-project.org/Main/UseCasesList

It is just a stub so please tell me witch Use case is promising in
your opinion or directly edit the table.

Maybe the most promisig case is the one proposed by Ryan and many
others:
Start from a small community that frequently meet face to face to
exchange goods.
There should be cheap and diffused access to mobile internet.

Can you find a community with such features?

Romualdo

[Daniel]

Great start! How about also something along the lines of "self-contained
communities"? For instance, a co-op, a residence/dormitory, a company, a
team, a family, etc. Anything from chores to rent to lunch to work and
so on could be Ripplized...

[Romualdo Grillo]

Good hint.

Consider very small communities and very small values, and compare:
1) using a ripple service over a digital network
2) talk with the others shake hands and remember

Ripple can be convenient only if
- you always have a smartphone in your poket
- using the software is effortless with a pleasing interface (easy as
a video game).
Otherwise you need someone that likes ripple concept and wants to use
it even if it is more laborious than other systems.

Do you have any specific example meeting those criteria?

Ciao
Romualdo

>  signature.asc
> < 1KVisualizzaScarica

[Daniel]

Software companies?

I think more people these days use smart phones and spend a lot of time
at computers, and the existing Ripple-related interfaces are pretty
easy. I think it's actually quite accessible for someone who wants to
set up a credit relationship or acknowledge a transfer to do so.

[Daniel]

Another idea for this list would be community currency users who need a
credit service. If you're dealing in a currency that doesn't have much
in the way of financial services, it could be useful for participants to
offer each other credit services in that currency through a Ripple-based
site.

On 02/01/2011 01:06 PM, Romualdo Grillo wrote:

[Daniel]

Micro-bonds:

Found a community or company. For small teams and projects looking for
quick setup and quick return. Seems suitable for a lot of new economy
style activity, rapidly solving small problems through distributed
collaboration in a way that provides lasting value.

Someone may want to start a micro-bond indexing service...

[danny jp]

On Tue, Feb 1, 2011 at 10:40 PM, Romualdo Grillo <rg...@tin.it> wrote:

Good hint.

Consider very small communities and very small values, and compare:
1) using a ripple service over a digital network

 

Very small values argues for digital recording if the frequency is high.

2) talk with the others shake hands and remember

very small values don't require significant security. Recording is key, but not security, if frequency is low.

 

Ripple can be convenient only if
- you always have a smartphone in your poket

I disagree. A ripplised retailer only needs the payers some kind of short range radio equipped secure tag (bluetooth, zigbee) that uniquely identifies them and is capable of bi-directional communication. Then the retailers internet connection takes care of the rest once it has identified the customer and established a ripple route. After that the retailer hub just requests confirmation from the payers terminal.

That payer terminal could be any low cost phone with bluetooth or wifi or a $15 custom built unit. The unit would be less with subsidy.

 

- using the software is effortless with a pleasing interface (easy as
a video game).

The interface shouldn't be 'software', it should be limited to say three buttons. Why do you need  a smartphone?

 

[danny jp]

Start from a small community that frequently meet face to face to
exchange goods. 

There should be cheap and diffused access to mobile internet.

I suggest that the best starting point are those social groups who can euphemistically be termed 'underbanked'. That is, they don't regularly or ever carry electronic means of payment. This may also mean they don't carry phones or have nothing to trade. But it does mean there is no competition between ripple and the mainstream banking behemoth.

First up in this category is:

1) teenagers in developed economies (phones=yes, money=no, tradeable goods=no)

2) the lower echelons of society in developing economies (phones=maybe, money=no, tradeable goods=maybe)

3) most all of the citizens of third world economies (phones=no, money=no, tradeable goods=yes)

4) the 'on benefits' class in developed economies (phones=maybe, money=maybe, tradeable goods=no)

The categories having money=no/maybe and tradeable goods=no can clear debts using their benefits payments. 

There is a lot to be said for the idea of adding liquidity using ripple to communities having a significant need to smooth consumption between paydays via a significant number of low value transactions that otherwise would never occur due to lack of trust.

 

[danny jp]

e.g.

http://www.marketresearch.com/map/prod/2660789.html

[Daniel]

Even a look through the ToC proved useful!

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[Romualdo Grillo]

Thank you jp.

> radio equipped secure tag (bluetooth, zigbee)

Ok I added it in the Use case list.
I also added Wi-Fi, don't you think Wi-Fi is the easier solution at
the moment?

I will add more Use cases later.

http://ripple-project.org/Main/UseCasesList

For each promising use-case I tried to list the crucial tasks needed
for a "take off".
Red for crucial tasks orange for les important tasks.
It is just a stub.
If you do not agree or have comments, you are welcome.

Romualdo

[danny jp]

Romualdo, the BT thing was just in response to the wrong statement that smartphones are needed.

The key point IMO is to focus on the underbanked, so I'd say that should go in as a use case. That is, those without any other electronic means of payment.

Danny

[Romualdo Grillo]

I inserted some more Ideas in
http://ripple-project.org/Main/UseCasesList
Ideas come from many discussion here in the group. I linked the
original discussion were possible.
I know there are many more Ideas that deserve to be inserted.
You can Insert them yourself in the wiki or post them here so that I
can add them.

Danny jp:
I inserted "Underbanked" as a target Local community, not as a
separate use case.
What do you think?
Fell free to modify or comment.

Maybe the most promising use case at the moment is "Local community".
I propose to improve ripplepay's usability and then try to spread it
in some local communities.
My focus is on usability.

Ciao Romualdo

[Daniel]

Romualdo,

Good stuff, getting all this into the wiki.

Local vs. global community... I'm unsure which if either of these would
be higher priority -- both can be done at the same time, of course, as
people interact online and offline according to their desires.

I think usability could be quite "useful", especially in serving to
simplify the ideas and processes for new people so that they can become
familiar with using our services. Do what you think is most valuable --
of course, something that you're good at and enjoy is valuable, so
definitely consider that! But it's also worth bearing in mind that some
things you enjoy aren't in huge demand, so it's important to find a good
balance.

Daniel

[danny jpw]

> I inserted "Underbanked" as a target Local community, not as a
> separate use case.
> What do you think?
> Fell free to modify or comment.

Well in my personal opinion ripple is never in the first instance
going to compete successfully or gain sufficient momentum in any
situation where a good or service can as easily be exchanged using
standard POS terminals, debt cards, online transaction processing
etc.

Therefore I am suggesting that your hierarchy is wrong, and that the
underbanked should be at the top, and then the various global and
local scenarios that come under this heading a secondary use cases.

The other key use case IMO is for informal transactions where record
keeping and quick clearing of transactions is required but no POS
equipment the links to the mainstream baking network is present.

Note that transactions between the underbanked may be formal (in the
sense that the goods and services exchanged are not trivial, and may
be quite high volume and/or value and in the sense that defaults are a
serious problem). Informal transactions are those that might take
place for example between high school kids or undergraduates on
campus, or in a skate park. Of course informal transactions may
overlap with the underbanked category.

What I am saying is that I think the initial thrust of your
categorization is questionable, focusing on somewhat arbitrary
distinctions of the rather vague term 'community' supplemented with
other random use cases. IMO it should be developed as a competitive
analysis that identifies gaps in the market left by the mainstream
financial system, wherever they may be. Once the gaps are found, they
can then be grouped according to what common characteristics they
have. I would suggest that a standard 'four forces' market analysis
would be appropriate starting point.

>
> Maybe the most promising use case at the moment is "Local community".
> I propose to improve ripplepay's usability and then try to spread it
> in some local communities.
> My focus is on usability.
>

Following on from the above, it seems to me that a most promising use
case is a high school playgorund or undergraduate campus. Plenty of
face time, plenty of underbanked users, and plenty of informal
transactions and small time credit exchanged. Also, sufficient paper
cash circulates in these places to clear debts with zero recourse to
electronic clearing via commercial banks. Likewise, smartphone
penetration is high.

Suitable well designed android and iOS ripple apps along with an on
campus server would work. The whole thing could be run as a school
project or as a university undergraduate project or graduate research
project, perhaps a collaboration between the computer science and
economics departments. Of course a local school might be willing to
trial a system you have developed independently.

The microcosm of a moderate sized high school is probably ideal for
real world trials.

Danny

[danny jpw]

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porter_five_forces_analysis

[ in the below, you could substitute the total transaction value
passing though ripple multiplied by some fraction for 'profits'. While
ripple may be not-for-profit, if a market is identified in which
profits would in theory be obtainable if it were a commercial
enterprise, then that is likely to be a good candidate for initial
trials]

"Porter's Five Forces is a framework for the industry analysis and
business strategy development formed by Michael E. Porter of Harvard
Business School in 1979. It draws upon Industrial Organization (IO)
economics to derive five forces that determine the competitive
intensity and therefore attractiveness of a market. Attractiveness in
this context refers to the overall industry profitability. An
"unattractive" industry is one in which the combination of these five
forces acts to drive down overall profitability. A very unattractive
industry would be one approaching "pure competition", in which
available profits for all firms are driven down to zero.

Three of Porter's five forces refer to competition from external
sources. The remainder are internal threats.

Porter referred to these forces as the micro environment, to contrast
it with the more general term macro environment. They consist of those
forces close to a company that affect its ability to serve its
customers and make a profit. A change in any of the forces normally,
requires a business unit to re-assess the marketplace given the
overall change in industry information. The overall industry
attractiveness does not imply that every firm in the industry will
return the same profitability. Firms are able to apply their core
competencies, business model or network to achieve a profit above the
industry average. A clear example of this is the airline industry. As
an industry, profitability is low and yet individual companies, by
applying unique business models, have been able to make a return in
excess of the industry average."

[Ryan Fugger]

On Wed, Feb 9, 2011 at 4:36 AM, danny jpw <dann...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Well in my personal opinion ripple is never in the first instance
> going to compete successfully or gain sufficient momentum in any
> situation where a good or service can as easily be exchanged using
> standard POS terminals, debt cards, online transaction processing
> etc.
>

I agree with this somewhat. The existing monetary system carries a
lot of inertia that will take a long time for Ripple to overcome if
we're competing directly for the same sorts of transactions. That's
why we need to identify areas where the existing system fails, and
start by filling in those gaps.

The biggest failing of the existing system I can see is that it works
against community, and in particular the raising of children. It's a
cliche that it takes a village to raise a child, but anyone who's ever
been around children knows that it's true. Our economic system,
however, works to remove children from the adult sphere in order that
adults may be more materially productive. It breaks our bonds with
each other so we end up relying on our bond with the bank.

There's a golden opportunity for Ripple here I think: Ripple can be
the currency of child-minding. Watching children is exactly where we
need to do a better job at acknowledging and repaying efforts, but
where relying on money can bring in exactly the wrong kind of
impersonal mass-production mentality. Besides, so many parents are
short on cash that they are forced to rely on ad-hoc informal IOU
systems for babysitting already, and feel intrinsically the value of
those systems. Cash paid for child-minding is rarely a full
acknowledgement of the value of the care given -- more often the
acknowledgement resides in the relationships that form around
children.

More than just daycare for toddlers though, the vision I have is for a
system that allows children to be educated, grow to adulthood, and
find meaningful work in an extended social network of adults and peers
that care for each other more than they care about their bank
accounts. No more factory daycares, no more factory schools -- no
more factories.

Ripple's strength is that it creates economic villages, and I think
the perfect way to use these villages might be to help parents raise
children. What do you think?

Ryan

[Thomas Hartman]

I like it.Reminds me of "new tribalist" vision of Daniel Quinn, and in
particular child rearing chapter in My Ishmael.

There may have some challenges with the "two mental accounting systems" problem.

Accounting system one is for money, uses numbers. (Whether dollars or
script is immaterial.)

Accounting system two is for social credit, a lot more fuzzy -- though
there is definitely some accounting going on.

Human nature seems to have a reluctance though to assign a numerical
value to social credit.

That's not to say you shouldn't push in this direction though.

One thing for certain I agree with, we need to get creative to find
niches for ripple and other alt economy systems.

[Ryan Fugger]

On Wed, Feb 9, 2011 at 12:49 PM, Thomas Hartman
<thomash...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> Human nature seems to have a reluctance though to assign a numerical
> value to social credit.
>

This one shouldn't be too hard -- the units can be hours of child-minding.

Ryan

[Romualdo Grillo]

> On Wed, Feb 9, 2011 at 4:36 AM, danny jpw <danny...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Well in my personal opinion ripple is never in the first instance
> > going to compete successfully or gain sufficient momentum in any
> > situation where a good or service can as easily be exchanged using
> > standard POS terminals, debt cards, online transaction processing
> > etc.
>
> I agree with this somewhat.  The existing monetary system carries a
> lot of inertia that will take a long time for Ripple to overcome if
> we're competing directly for the same sorts of transactions.  That's
> why we need to identify areas where the existing system fails, and
> start by filling in those gaps.

Ok let's say the underbanked is the more feasible use case at the
moment.

>Therefore I am suggesting that your hierarchy is wrong, and that the
>underbanked should be at the top, and then the various global and
>local scenarios that come under this heading a secondary use cases.

My original idea was to classify use-cases in those classes:
1) Face to face commerce (was Local community)
2) Internet commerce (Global community)
3) Donations
4).......

"underbanked", "high school" and Ryan's use case "Local Business" fall
on in class 1), so they share more or less similar requirements.
I do not think the categorization should be dropped. I find it is
better than just a long list.
I agree the page should be rewritten to add more details and give more
evidence to "Underbanked" and other interesting cases.

Danny, do you have an Idea for a better categorization?

I found the "five forces analysis" very pertinent too. I did not know
before.

Ciao
Romualdo

[danny jp]

Ripple's strength is that it creates economic villages, and I think
the perfect way to use these villages might be to help parents raise
children.  What do you think?

In an ideal world yes. But this is not an ideal world, and the problem here is that parents don't trust each other or other kids to mind their own kids. In my view this is because the candidate babysitters are not personally known to their prospective employers, which is of course a feature of dormitory villages and suburbs. If a village or town had a sufficiently robust local community then I think ripple might be useful, but in general the community is not there in the first place.

Secondly, leaving aside the above issues I would say the volume and frequency of local babysitting services is too low to be a viable ripple use case.

That said, I do think babysitting (and other inter-parent services) is an ideal way to export usage of ripple from a primarily high school playground initial deployment to incorporate adults. Schools still remain the critical community focus, having high face time both among kids and adults. I reckon the kids are a better starting point because many suburban mums are going to find ripple 'weird' or 'geeky'. The kids OTOH will not think this at all. The kids are also likely to have a higher potential volume of transactions (unwanted gifts, second hand clothes, skateboards etc) to make than the adults, even if some of those transactions are a bit iffy (like cigarettes).

If ripple successfully got a foothold with the kids, then I would say the rest of the community would follow after that.

Using this plan of attack, the main initial reason to want to have adults involved would be as a source to inject cash into the system (pocket money, babysitting money etc) to clear debts.

[danny jp]

My original idea was to classify use-cases in those classes:
1) Face to face commerce (was Local community)
2) Internet commerce (Global community)
3) Donations
4).......

"underbanked", "high school" and Ryan's use case "Local Business" fall
on in  class 1), so they share more or less similar requirements.
I do not think the categorization should be dropped. I find it is
better than just a long list.
I agree the page should be rewritten to add more details and give more
evidence to "Underbanked" and other interesting cases.

'underbanked' can apply to both face to face and global community. As I said before, the underbanked may suffer from lack of access to electronic money, but this does not mean they don't have access to the comms tech required to affect remote transactions. There are plenty of internet cafes and mobile phones among for example, the egyptian lower classes. After all, we know they are on facebook!

yet they remain underbanked.
 

Danny, do you have an Idea for a better categorization?

yes, just start with:

1) underbanked
2) sufficiently banked
3) informal transactions (low value, social)
4) formal transactions (higher value, commercial)

'local community', 'global community', 'charity' etc, are sub categories of each of the above items.

Danny

[Romualdo Grillo]

In my perspective a Use case is:

Someone does something with a certain sequence of operation using
certain tools ....

1)My focus is on "What they do" and "wich tool they need".

A)

1) underbanked
2) sufficiently banked
3) informal transactions (low value, social)
4) formal transactions (higher value, commercial)

seems to me primarily focused on "Who "

Both classification may be useful and may coexist, so a new "Index"
may be built (I now editing tables in the wiki is boring, you can
create a spreedshit file and I will help to convert it).

Personally I'm more interested on classification 1) and I will work on
it.

Romualdo

[danny jp]

I'll do a spreadsheet and hopefully you'll see what I mean. It'll show both the who and the what and the why.

I would say a spreadsheet is a better way to capture this data because its quite complex but if you can convert it automatically to wiki that's great.

Stay tuned.

Romualdo

[Romualdo Grillo]

At the moment I manually write the tables in the wiki.
There are tools to do it automatically but we have to install such
tools and we have to ask to Ryan to do it.

Romualdo

[Thomas Hartman]

fwiw I like pulic gsheets as well and have seen them used successfully
in a variety of contexts.

[danny jp]

Here is a first cut spreadsheet.

It is divided across the top into ripple competencies and requirements. Each row defines a specific market according to these competencies and requirements. A 0 indicates a bad fit with ripple, a 1 indicates neutral, and a 2 indicates a good fit.

A ripple competency is the key things ripple offers, namely:

1) access to credit

2) access to clearing

3) access to record keeping

A ripple requirement is something ripple requires to be effective, namely:

1) a market focus on low value and informal transactions. Informal transactions are mainly between people who know each other. 

2) a market having reasonably high transaction frequency. A good number of transactions is required to prevent ripple from stagnating

3) connection degree. a high 'natural' degree of ripple user connectedness is important. Any market in which the ripple users are likely to be connected or find it easy to connect to a high number of other ripple users is a good market for ripple.

4) closed loop. the more closed the community the more likely debts can be resolved without recourse to external sources of currency.

Now, this analysis is very simple and the scoring system perhaps doesn't capture the proper weightings to each competency and requirement, but it serves to highlight the kind of analysis I think is needed to find plausible use cases.

My favorites from the table are:

1) high school kids. 

2) after school clubs (run by parents and by schools, also toddler groups etc). This could be merged with babysitting and informal daycare. 

3) goldbug to goldbug. goldbugs holding physical gold in their house would like to transact with other goldbugs using gold. but you can't send gold down a wire. Currently their only option is to hold their gold in a warehouse with goldmoney.com or something which they don't like because they are paranoid. I think ripple creates a way for goldbugs to transact in gold grams without ever letting go of their precious. I also think that goldbugs are a natural global online community united by shared interests, and would probably buy and sell stuff between themselves denominated in gold just for the sheer pleasure of it. Thus goldbugs transacting in physical gold need credit, clearing and record keeping!

4) consumer to consumer barter. this works because the whole point of barter is to not use money. Thus they need credit, clearing and record keeping.

Now you can add any potential market you like to the spreadsheet and score it, and if you like alter weightings.

After the top few target are identified, a four/five forces analysis would be applied to each of the selected targets to determine the correct plan of attack for that particular market. Do this for enough potential use cases and hopefully some common themes will emerge to guide the general ripple deployment strategy.

Hope some of this is helpful.

Danny.

[Thomas Hartman]

nice analysis!

[Ryan Fugger]

Interesting chart. I would add a column for "strength of trust
connections", which isn't very high for students. I'm also not sure
what high school students would use Ripple for. I don't remember a
lot of economic transactions with my friends or other students in
school...

Ryan

[Thomas Hartman]

How about bookkeeping for fraternities?

Or something like wepay...

[danny jp]

On Fri, Feb 11, 2011 at 5:03 AM, Ryan Fugger <a...@ryanfugger.com> wrote:

Interesting chart.  I would add a column for "strength of trust
connections", which isn't very high for students.  I'm also not sure
what high school students would use Ripple for.  I don't remember a
lot of economic transactions with my friends or other students in
school...

Sure. I think that makes sense to add: 'initial trust', but also 'potential trust'. Trust may not exist just because people have not transacted much previously, but in fact there is no reason why that trust can't grow. There are probably other columns that may merit inclusion. I would say a typical happy kid in high school would probably trust at least 5 people for $10, and would at the very least be trusted by their parents for their monthly allowance. They may well also be trusted by other adults they babysit for or cut the lawn for.

The students I am thinking of are at an age where they are starting to have part time jobs and/or a decent allowance. Ripple would allow them to exchange items. Like selling/buying old phones, selling or buying a jacket, or selling an unwanted pair of cinema tickets or an unwanted gift from auntie. They could also earn credit by babysitting and lawn cutting. 15+ age kids are starting to accumulate an income and possessions. Ripple may present better value purchase opps than the mall would for this purchasing power (e.g. second hand stuff). Kids like to swap computer games, and alot of them buy them from the pre-used section of the local computer game store. Ripple bypasses that store, and delivers more value to the kids as a result, and the swap can take place even if the buyer has no money that week.

I went to a boarding school once, and we all had a tuck box in which we kept a half-terms worth of goodies like pot noodles and stuff like that, along with a half termly allowance (a pittance). They typically ran out after two or three weeks. Then if you were hungry in the evening after that, tough shit. That's where the credit is important. While the kids may be having some income, it is likely not enough or too patchy, which is why credit is useful.

The fact that informal economic transactions don't happen much in a typical high school either means it is a  market undeserved for financial services or it means it is an unnatractive market for financial services (some may think it a morally inappropriate market for financial services as well) . Regardless of which it is, I think this is the kind of analysis that should be used to cast around for suitable use cases.

Danny

 

[danny jp]

The goldbug2goldbug use case is also a rather compelling one after the first analysis that is worth thinking about more.

Goldbugs keep their gold where they can touch it. So they have plenty of capital sitting round doing nothing.

You can't send gold down a wire but you can send a gold-debt. Golddebts can be cleared between two parties using a service like goldmoney.com.

But quite likely, the seller bug and the buyer bug don't have accounts at exactly the same gold warehousing business. Also, these businesses charge money for keeping your stash with them.

So the ripplebug strategy is to allow bugs to make gold denominated transactions between bugs lacking access to common clearing services (they don't need access to credit, which is a mistake on my chart).

You may think bugs don't trust each other but they implicitly do when you look at the comments sections of goldbug websites. They would like something like ripple to use just so they can feel they are getting one over on the government and the banks, and are putting their stashes to work in a small but meaningful way.

Danny

[Ryan Fugger]

On Fri, Feb 11, 2011 at 1:42 AM, danny jp <dann...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Sure. I think that makes sense to add: 'initial trust', but also 'potential
> trust'. Trust may not exist just because people have not transacted much
> previously, but in fact there is no reason why that trust can't grow. There
> are probably other columns that may merit inclusion. I would say a typical
> happy kid in high school would probably trust at least 5 people for $10, and
> would at the very least be trusted by their parents for their monthly
> allowance. They may well also be trusted by other adults they babysit for or
> cut the lawn for.
>

I think that maturity will play a big factor in maintaining Ripple
relationships over time, and that's where there will be the most
issues in high schools. Not that every kid can't do it, but that
there will probably be many disputes. However, if the system is open
enough so that others can see where the debts lie, then peer pressure
can play a positive factor. Also, I would think the system as a whole
would be a good way of teaching financial trust to kids, so I'm not
down on the use case entirely.

> The students I am thinking of are at an age where they are starting to have
> part time jobs and/or a decent allowance. Ripple would allow them to
> exchange items. Like selling/buying old phones, selling or buying a jacket,
> or selling an unwanted pair of cinema tickets or an unwanted gift from
> auntie. They could also earn credit by babysitting and lawn cutting. 15+ age
> kids are starting to accumulate an income and possessions. Ripple may
> present better value purchase opps than the mall would for this purchasing
> power (e.g. second hand stuff). Kids like to swap computer games, and alot
> of them buy them from the pre-used section of the local computer game store.
> Ripple bypasses that store, and delivers more value to the kids as a result,
> and the swap can take place even if the buyer has no money that week.
>
> I went to a boarding school once, and we all had a tuck box in which we kept
> a half-terms worth of goodies like pot noodles and stuff like that, along
> with a half termly allowance (a pittance). They typically ran out after two
> or three weeks. Then if you were hungry in the evening after that, tough
> shit. That's where the credit is important. While the kids may be having
> some income, it is likely not enough or too patchy, which is why credit is
> useful.
>

OK, I see the potential. It would be cool if we could get an entire
school using Ripple...

Ryan

[danny jp]

I think that maturity will play a big factor in maintaining Ripple
relationships over time, and that's where there will be the most
issues in high schools.  

Sure, but that's where it is useful to have adults involved. If the ripple scheme were sold to a school community as a whole then adults would be involved and its the adults who ultimately create the required liquidity and demand (e.g. for lawn cutting, babysitting, doling out allowances.

  

Not that every kid can't do it, but that
there will probably be many disputes.  However, if the system is open
enough so that others can see where the debts lie, then peer pressure
can play a positive factor.  Also, I would think the system as a whole
would be a good way of teaching financial trust to kids, so I'm not
down on the use case entirely.

I think the kids would think it pretty cool to have a sense of financial empowerment. And with any empowerment there is the potential for mistakes to be made but that's how we learn. It would be easy to cap credit limits at least initially.

 

OK, I see the potential.  It would be cool if we could get an entire
school using Ripple...

That is part of the next step of market analysis. You may be familiar with the terms TAM (total available market) and SAM (serviceable addressable market). If the whole market is the school and associated adults, what portion of that can be captured by ripple?

Then moving up a level, if you have a deployment template that works in one school, it can work in any school. 

A given level of SAM is probably required to make ripple sustainable in a closed community. But  actually these communities can be linked, because kids are often friends with kids in other schools. Failing that, the adult supervisors can arrange for funded links that bridge networks between neighboring school communities.

[Romualdo Grillo]

Very good work!!
Surely must be inserted in the wiki.
I will be away for two days.
In the meantime I propose to use dise Google docs import of the
document, so that it is easier to propose changes (there is version
management)

https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AsdIhu2cdQwsdEJ5WjdtVzlDYm9kM25Uc3lzd2NtN0E&hl=en&authkey=CKuCyeoC#gid=0

Romualdo

[danny jp]

Thanks Romualdo, but rather than just inserting it in the wiki and moving on, there should be some discussion as to the categorization I have used. 

I have proposed access to credit, access to clearing and record keeping as the main benefits ripple offers. I have proposed that ripple as currently envisaged needs low value transactions, good transaction frequency, informal transactions,high connectedness and closed communities to succeed.

It is worth discussing whether in fact these are actually correct or not, since getting this categorization right is critical to avoid the garbage in, garbage out situation down the line.

Danny

[Daniel]

These latest conversations are so amazing. I generally agree with comments so far and would have a few more thoughts... I've got some things to take care of so might not have much chance for a little while, but will chip in where I can...

[Romualdo Grillo]

> I have proposed access to credit, access to clearing and record keeping as
> the main benefits ripple offers.

What can you do with Ripple? More or less the same things you can do
with your Bank account:
1)Clearing: pay, donate, transfer money

I would further distinguish
1a) face to face transaction: payment giving goods (This is only
feasible in a local community),
1b) Online transaction

2)Credit: borrow money or lend money
3)Currency Exchange
...........
The term "Record Keeping" is not clear to me.

> envisaged needs low value transactions, good transaction frequency, informal
> transactions,high connectedness and closed communities to succeed.
>

With this useful table we can better compare scenarios and search for:
1) The best "Take off" case, that is a case that can be launched with
little effort
2) The best cases in future perspective.

For the take off case I generally agree with the parameters you
suggest.

Romualdo

[danny jp]

What can you do with Ripple? More or less the same things you can do
with your Bank account:
1)Clearing: pay, donate, transfer money

Ripple is not a good candidate for savings as it is currently defined. So there is one difference.
 

I would further distinguish
1a) face to face transaction: payment giving goods (This is only
feasible in a local community),
1b) Online transaction

Why? I'm not sure why this distinction is relevant? Can you explain the rationale a bit more?
 

2)Credit: borrow money or lend money
3)Currency Exchange
...........
The term "Record Keeping" is not clear to me.

Record keeping just serves as a reminder of who has given what to who and who owes who. For example, an after school club records which kids have attended and which parents owe money for classes attended and which parents have their account in credit (e.g. for the next half term). After school clubs normally use a ledger for that, or perhaps a laptop, so perhaps they don't need so much record keeping.

Kids transacting in playground are unlikely to have any useful centralized record keeping resource. Ripple offers this service.

Local consumer to consumer barter might also benefit from record keeping services.
 

> envisaged needs low value transactions, good transaction frequency, informal
> transactions,high connectedness and closed communities to succeed.
>

With this useful table we can better compare scenarios and search for:
1) The best "Take off" case, that is a case that can be launched with
little effort

little effort or best chance of success? Two criteria, ideally both would be met.
 

2) The best cases in future perspective.

I suggest that this ought to be tackled from a total available market, and serviceable addressable market perspective.

Glad the table is proving useful !

Danny

[Romualdo Grillo]

More parameters may be added as columns in the table: e.g. Ryan
proposed "strength of trust connections". It is difficult to say
which parameter deserves to be put in the table and which in a
paragraph describing a use case in detail.

> > I would further distinguish
> > 1a) face to face transaction: payment giving goods (This is only
> > feasible in a local community),
> > 1b) Online transaction
>
> Why? I'm not sure why this distinction is relevant? Can you explain the
> rationale a bit more?
>

That's my opinion: buyng and paiyng face to face is different from the
same transaction online: in many ways:
1) Different tools are needed, Face to face means you need cheap
internet access in the marketplace.
2) They have different critical masses
3) In online commerce a party (usually the buyer) pays in advance and
waits for the other party to send the good. That implies some kind of
trust mechanism exists between buyer and seller. In my opinion that
trust mechanism have an impact on many aspects of the transaction.

Romualdo

[danny jp]

More parameters may be added as columns in the table: e.g. Ryan
proposed "strength of trust connections".  It is difficult to say
which parameter deserves to be put in the table and which in a
paragraph describing a use case in detail.

agreed. It is worth trying to get this first bit right though!

 

>

That's my opinion: buyng and paiyng face to face is different from the
same transaction online: in many ways:
1) Different tools are needed, Face to face means you need cheap
internet access in the marketplace.

In the face to face case the payer and payee need access to one internet connection, on a phone or wifi or wired internet. What is the difference you are seeing between that and the non face to face situation?

 

2) They have different critical masses

What is the thinking behind that?

 

3) In online commerce a party (usually the buyer) pays in advance and
waits for the other party to send the good. That implies some kind of
trust mechanism exists between buyer and seller. In my opinion that
trust mechanism have an impact on many aspects of the transaction.

That is a good point but I suggest a face to face situation may also have deferred delivery, since the seller and buyer may agree to do a deal and say, in the playground situation, bring the item in next day. Likewise buying places at after school clubs etc implies some deferred delivery.

I guess this is where trustDavis type insurance would have to come in?

[Virginia Cassel]

There was talk a while back (maybe November? can't find the post) about developing a card interface - is that dead? It would solve a lot of these issues. Vendors would have a card reader that would connect to ripplepay and the exchange would take place, just like the current EBT system or credit/debit card system.

Hey, all, I'm new. In Milwaukee, WI and looking into alternative currency for our community. We're opening a grocery/cafe and interested in being able to accept the prevailing alternative currency.

Virginia

--

[Daniel]

Virginia,

Welcome, nice to have you! I don't think there's been any further discussion on the card interface since then, but I still think it's an awesome idea, and would be interested in pursuing it further. That's cool about the community grocery/cafe, I and perhaps others here would be happy to help out with any Ripple-related areas.

Daniel

[Daniel]

All transactions have a trust element, even if it's only a short one for the duration of a brief exchange.

For trust assessments, my feeling is that credit scoring functionality would be a good choice now, with other possibilities to add later including visualizations and more advanced features.

[danny jp]

All transactions have a trust element, even if it's only a short one for the duration of a brief exchange.

For trust assessments, my feeling is that credit scoring functionality would be a good choice now, with other possibilities to add later including visualizations and more advanced features.

Yes. When I though more about the above it seemed to me that the dichotomy Romualdo is concerned about is transactions have payment in advance and payment in arrears. Both types of settlement are used in both the face to face and remote cases. Playground transactions would likely be payment in advance, and after school clubs and lawn mowing are payment in arrears. For remote transactions, buying on ebay or something is payment in advance, and a business buying from a supplier is normally payment in arrears.

So the column headings would be 'needs payment in advance', 'needs payment in arrears'.

The question is to which case does ripple deliver the greatest added value?

[Rich]

About the wiki that's discussed in this thread, and also the Ripple
main wiki and these wiki-like pages: http://groups.google.com/group/rippleusers/web?hl=en
. If you've been around on the Internet for a while you become
reluctant to contribute to wikis because you've seen many of them
become abandoned by the owner or there is a fight over the content
(edit wars).

Now I don't know how many of you are active open source developers,
but in the community the big thing is now to use "git" to replicate
data such as code and other files and keep track of changes to it.
Because of that wikis are increasingly moved away from some database
on some server only an authority has access to to be stored in git.
You contribute by cloning the wiki and issuing a pull request. If you
become unhappy with how things are going you have your own copy and
can maybe host it on a new site of yours.

Wiki engines like gollum (https://github.com/github/gollum) / smeagol
(https://github.com/benbjohnson/smeagol/wiki) serve content directly
out of the git repository. Here's how to host with Apache:
https://github.com/tecnh/gollum/wiki/Gollum-and-Passenger This hasn't
been shown to work on a grand scale yet so don't expect Wikipedia to
move to git anytime soon but Ripple seems like a smallish project with
a few contributors for now.

Maybe if you made the wiki more accessible like that it would attract
more contributers. Also note that philosophy of distributed storage
with git matches the philosophy of distributed credit: A central wiki
is bad the same way a central bank is bad.


On Feb 2, 8:06 am, Romualdo Grillo <rg...@tin.it> wrote:
> Among many ideas proposed here in the group, I'm trying to organize a
> list of most promising use-cases for Ripple.
>
> http://ripple-project.org/Main/UseCasesList
>
> It is just a stub so please tell me witch Use case is promising in
> your opinion or directly edit the table.
>
> Maybe the most promisig case is the one proposed by Ryan and many
> others:
> Start from a small community that frequently meet face to face to
> exchange goods.
> There should be cheap and diffused access to mobile internet.
>
> Can you find a community with such features?
>
> Romualdo

[Thomas Hartman]

self plug: patch-tag.com offers gitit wikis (using darcs backend).

> Among many ideas proposed here in the g...

[Ryan Fugger]

A git wiki sounds like a good idea, but not high enough priority for
me to spend the time right now, honestly.

[danny jp]

I think using github is a good idea for all the reasons Rich mentions.

If the use cases are ever going to progress to a point where there are plausible real-world candidates that can be targetted then more than a wiki is going to be needed, IMO.

Plus, there is no need for ryan to be the maintainer if he's too busy.

However, what would be the stated purpose of the github repo..? - it seems pointless or harmful to overlap significantly or duplicate  the main dev stuff.

Danny

[Romualdo Grillo]

Rich,
The only Ripple wiki to my knowledge is here http://ripple-project.org/
The current WIKI have many shortages, if someone can port the wiki to
a better platform I will be grate to him.

[Romualdo Grillo]

> > 2) They have different critical masses
>
> What is the thinking behind that?

Critical mass in local communities and Global communities.

Local community implies it is a small and tight group

Reaching a 30% diffusion of Ripple in a local community of 100 persons
means Ripple is really useful there. So the critical mass is reached.
That's a relatively small bootsrap investment.


Most Global communities are much bigger:
If you try to use Ripple on Ebay and you have 30 Ripplers, that means
0,00003% or less.
Bootstrapping on Ebay means much bigger investment.

Romualdo

[danny jp]

I see where you are coming from. I guess I was thinking of small, tight global communities, like for example the bitcoin community, or perhaps goldbugs, or perhaps a global online community based around collecting and swapping  star wars memorabilia or something like that.

I think the assumption that local=small,tight and global=big/loose is perhaps a bit of a false dichotomy. For example, the local authority area in the UK in which I live has about 170,000 people in it and only one major town.

That, local community is far larger and more diverse than quite a number of global communities formed around more specific and narrower interests.

Its not clear to me that one is much better than the other. In fact many local communities are not that closed in fact. An open economy is one in which exports and imports account for the majority of the GDP of that economy. A closed economy is one in which the majority of items produced are consumed internally. I'd say that a typical local community is very open in this regard.

Danny

Romualdo

[Romualdo Grillo]

> I think the assumption that local=small,tight and global=big/loose is
> perhaps a bit of a false dichotomy. For example, the local authority area in
> the UK in which I live has about 170,000 people in it and only one major
> town.
>

A)-Communities that interact mainly Face to Face
B)-Communities that interact mainly online

1)Low bootstrap investment
2)High bootstrap investment

I Agree it is too semplicistic to say A=1 and B=2.

I think both A/B and 1/2 are worth mentioning somewere.

I have modified a little bit the table, it's just a proposal.

https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=tByZ7mW9Cbod3nTsyswcm7A&authkey=CKuCyeoC#gid=0

It's quite big and complex maybe we should split it.
I think someone should write a new wiki page called "Market analysis"
and link it prominently.

[danny jp]

I agree. Looking at the SS updates you did, I think we'd need to understand what 'low/high bootstrap investment' means.

Is it investment by the ripple development community, or is it investment by the initial users of ripple in the context of the market segment?

Also we need to explore to what degree face to face and non face to face usage models actually alter the value proposition of using ripple.

Danny

--

[Romualdo Grillo]

On 23 Feb, 13:21, danny jp <danny...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I agree. Looking at the SS updates you did, I think we'd need to understand
> what 'low/high bootstrap investment' means.
>
> Is it investment by the ripple development community, or is it investment by
> the initial users of ripple in the context of the market segment?

It is investment by the Ripple development community.
A donation pool for a "stand alone server" reached 750$ some time ago
here in this group (notice it is not assigned yet).
If you find a use case with a 'bootstrap investment ' lower than 1000$
we can definitely start a donation pool and give it a try.
Consider this idea written by Ryan:

<
Bootstrap the network by giving things away. Go bake some muffins
and just hand them out in the neighborhood. Then set up an account in
ripple for each neighbor. Your credit limit with them is $5 and theirs
with you is $8 because of the muffin.
>

[Romualdo Grillo]

I tried to resume provisional, but still useful, results of this
discussion here. It's just a stub so feel free to modify or comment.
http://groups.google.com/group/rippleusers/browse_thread/thread/44bbb9f0f8ba52af/8ed1a9aa9165b773