The Vril Protocol for Value Exchange (Ripple++)

[The A Man]

[Thanks to Resilience author Joan Dark for leading me here...]

I had been working on designing the layout for a value-exchange system much like Ripple (multi-hop rippling transactions) but one that, unlike Ripple, has independent denominations built into the very system design of the protocol. Just with this one tweak, one can arrive at a full-fledged value-exchange solution in which every user (or organization) can issue their own private-currency that circulates among an ocean of other private-currencies, each with its own exchange-rates. The Vril implementation is not strictly Ripple, but can function as a pure-ripple payment settlement network should the members so decide. The implementation uses distributed-hash-tables to do some of the magic and builds on Holochain, a peer-to-peer application building framework to realize that. The following is the link to the original post submitted to the Holochain forum.

https://forum.holochain.org/t/vril-the-ultimate-currency-project/4590

I hope it makes you feel proud, Ryan! Big fan of yours...

Thankyou.

- The A Man

[David Watson]

I built a multiple currency "thing" based on "ripple-like connections" as well.  

Here's a 40 page paper that walks you through the explanation of the concept along with links to an actual coded prototype you could throw up on to Google App Engine for free if you want.  It starts by explaining things in terms of old-school Ripple, then teaches Metric Reserve community banking semantics.  I do describe in detail the pseudocode that forms the basis of my graph traversal and account settlement algorithm if anyone's interested.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_PFO2pKHuzkCTMRn3nBd1AUN9oGRIIR02ex5mNPxGsE/edit?usp=sharing

The problem with community banking is that, in my opinion, it isn't all that special.  In fact, Hayek talked about multi-currency systems and competition in his work "Denationalisation of Money" a long time ago.  From my economic point of view, double-spending inflation is bad.  Pure Ripple can cause this too.  So can my system.  If you understand how exchanges work, yes, even the almighty Bitcoin can be price inflated.

However, many people don't agree on the economics or even on the definition of money.  I came to the conclusion that we need to keep the concept of money simple.  The very creation of the Federal Reserve was couched as the cure for a social ill.  If we're to make progress with honest monetary tools that help people, we need simple honest tools people can understand and avoid trying to make tools that cure economic problems. 

In other words, if we took a wrong path, we should head back to start.  We shouldn't be trying to make silver bullets out of desperation.  I came to see Metric Reserve as simply a fancy way of describing how individual banks ("users" in Metric Reserve semantics) could automate the book-balancing and reserve transferring process.  You could still set up something just like the Fed if you wanted, but if everyone understood the dangers of inflation, this system would at least make it easy to monitor.  

Technology, as has now been clearly shown, can be used as much for evil as good.  Many of our economic and social ills would be better served by promoting love, charity, and justice in simple direct ways rather than zealously believing that some fancy new technology holds the key to some utopian vision.

Anyway, not trying to poo-poo activism in this front.  I simply think the primary problem with monetary systems is more related to the power of soft money and the how savings are destroyed through inflation and lack of sound money.  But really, lack of local participation and ownership in the local economy needs to be a precursor to any community banking project being useful or relevant.  I don't think my system, Ryan's or even Bitcoin can counteract the powerful banking element in society.  The reason is that "banking" is a weapon of the powerful and wealthy.  I don't think banking in and of itself will be a force to counteract this, we need local economies to first realize this, build their own wealth and insulate themselves.

I'll end the rant there.  Seems dark, but I'm a believer in the Lord Jesus, so I believe love and light win in the end.

Keep the faith. 

David

[Daniel Treccia]

Thanks for sharing. I was just thinking, I am running out of 40 page reads on ancient crypto and IOU/electronic money systems. :)

But seriously, whatever this project started remains the solution in the end. Whatever the Company cannot solve in all the media theatre surrounding it, only the creator of the project knows what needs to be done in the end. Everyone loves nostalgia. Doesn't matter if you're my pink sheet stocks making me look like a genius because people confuse stock value with revenue and not real estate/property/intellectual property and pioneer systems everyone copied in retail and onto the "WWW"... but I digress. The original devs know what the end game is. They just don't tweet and hint at it cryptically once every 14 hours like our other alley,  @elonmusk. :)

[David Watson]

The solution is moral people running things.

Tech people, including Bitcoin crowd, are lost in semantics.  When everything's boiled down the solution is "don't steal".  You know, that thing Moses wrote down 3000+ years ago.  Even if we have "moral" A.I. that controls everything we do, including wiping our ass, you will still have to program morality into it.

But we can keep pretending the problem is intellectual and not moral.  Free will I guess.

I'll continue following what's written in my crusty old bible.

[The A Man]

It's great that you mention Hayek; in fact, I was originally gonna call the system "The Hayek Net" owing to the fact that the world Hayek envisioned is still nowhere close to reality despite all our successes with cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. You see, Hayek was never fond of the idea of returning to the Gold standard (or at least was less fond of that idea compared to the idea of having a plethora of currencies competing with each other for preserving their value against inflation, ultimately leading to an inflation-free, multi-currency, distributed, state-less, sovereign society which according to him would have a potential that would far exceed that of a society that lives under the Keynesian-controlled society.

[from his monograph titled "Decentralization of Money"]

Hayek would rather be proud of the present-day voucher schemes that many private companies have deployed (such as that of Starbucks), though they're not interchangeable for one another and are really just locked to their own platforms... Things will change though...

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As for your Metric Reserves System (yup, read it... ought to say, it was very explanatory), I doubt it solves any problem. In fact, quite the contrary; it creates more problems than it attempts to solve! And I quite don't see how it's a multi-currency thing! 

Plus the problems you highlighted about Ripple aren't problems per se. Especially the social problem that you addressed. Ripple was really a demonstration of multi-hop mutual-credit credit-clearing; it doesn't matter if you connect with friends or small trustworthy "Ripple Banks" or private organizations... You shouldn't have taken Ripple's whole "friends' social circle" thing literally...

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Let me rephrase the problem statement: 

- Inflation is bad, centralized trust is worse, digging Gold is a nightmare (i.e., BTC mining). 

- Value exists everywhere, yet money doesn't. 

- Privately issued currencies can cure the above (like no other).

- Multiple competing currencies require discoverability, swap-ability, and individual exchange-rates (set by the free-market operations).

- Not all value is tradeable; all money is. Money can only 'currencify' tradeable values.

- Neither money (i.e., currency) nor value drives growth (i.e., progress); trade does. [the wisdom of Adam Smith]

- Trade drives specialization (via. labor allocation), which in turn drives efficiency, which compounds over time, which makes all the difference (the industrial revolutions, for instance).

- Trade requires property privatization. (Socialism is out of the way)

[One could go into more depth and reasoning with Austrian praxeology, but I'd end it here... ]

Given the above, design a system of value-exchange that drives trade (primarily).

[cojulapa]

I also think that those voucher things where customers buy batches of a service at once with "state issued money" could be a good entry point for a ripple like system. 

Basically, you give the company the trust that they will provide the service you like multiple times in the future. 

And it makes sense from an economical standpoint. The customer often gets a discount for payin in batch. The company can better plan their cash flow.

Besides this open trust line could be used as good advertising imo. Since there is a customer who likes the service that much that he/she is willing to pay multiples of it in advance. She/He seems to be pretty certain that it is the best choice in the market and she/he won't change her/his mind that quickly...

[The A Man]

Yeah, like the Amazon Payback Balance. Check out this; there's a link in that post to a youtube video on the same subject that also touches on the prospective future of Amazon going all-in with their e-vouchers.