from ripppleusers announcement

[els]

see http://groups.google.com/group/rippleusers/browse_thread/thread/dd331fe43f51a256?hl=en.


Excerpt:

I'm glad you guys like the idea.

I actually switched from using 'alternative currency' to 'ledger-
based
currency' based on the concepts from ledgerism.net, as the latter
terminology seemed more neutral. Ledgerism is compatible with Prowl,
but the accounting/publishing platform needs to pre-authorize
requests
by settlement-agents to intermediate and automatically clear
outstanding obligations between two parties. Prowl reports could also
be used for exposing limits, etc. in case Ripple moves away from a
shared account as explained at http://ripplep2p.com/wiki/Main/AccountCreation
- but again, some kind of pre-authorization would be necessary.


I've contacted Todd this past summer but I only had vague ideas back
then. I was trying to see if there was some way to *ensure* a self-
balancing feature when ledgers are independently maintained by
participants, similar to what is found in mutual-credit type systems,
such as LETS, but without an intermediating account or agent. I
eventually came to the conclusion that preventing an imbalance from
ever occuring is not realistic at large-scale. As mentioned in other
threads, there is no fool-proof system. And so instead, Prowl is
focused on being able to cross-verify, audit and evaluate published
ledger information from different payment/currency frameworks.


I'm not as experienced in programming and accounting, and I still
think the query syntax could be better, so please give suggestions,
comments whenever you see something that could be improved.


Edgar