Ryan,
I'm not really impressed by it at all, and honestly it doesn't look like it aims to do anything that Ripple didn't already do except move the concept to a different architectural layer, and also make the middle man's "debt switching" explicit instead of like Ripple, where the pathfinding algo would decide for you.
I think Bitcoin has shown us that "money" has semantic issues as well as technical. On top of semantic problems inherent in economic talk about money in general, we have different people trying to solve different problems in the same space and disagreeing about what problems are relevant. Some are trying to solve open payment problem. Bitcoin creator thinks he's solving inflation problem, partly anyway, what Bitcoin really solves in my opinion is a trust problem related to an open ledger. But people have "faith" or trust anyway, in what Bitcoin represents. To many who have looked at the problem, it "seems" like a sounder money than what's the standard. Because no one fully understands the problem, there's no implementation of a solution TO the problem. Bitcoin doesn't actually solve THE problem imo, not even close. But my solution, just like Ripple, isn't really a competitor to Bitcoin. And Bitcoin would actually augment and enhance, imo, my solution, though I think moreso if it actually was used in conjuction with real assets. But getting to deep now...
My semantic explanation of what my system is, is probably as complex as the technical explanation. But neither is really all that complex. It's basically classic Ripple with some minor semantic and technical modification. But I believe when people understand it, they will easily see how to build and use it and even trust it, though many may disagree with my conclusions on why it's economically better and in fact helpful to use it.
I'm kind of lost right now where to begin, or when to begin talking about it in detail anyway. Kind of busy in life right now, so trying to focus on getting the prototype built. Been shying away from long-winded posts
I already know I'm going to build it on Google App Engine stack because I want anyone to be able to get an instance going for themselves.
Language: Python
DB: Datastore
Templating: Jinja2
Client: JQuery Mobile
I have a public Github already setup for it (though old skeleton code so far, nothing worth looking at, haven't gotten too far beyond GSD level development, but just started couple weeks ago)
Basically, the idea was I wanted anybody with a web browser to be able to run the thing. And that is still the plan. Completely develop, test, deploy from a web browser.
What I think people have ignored in classic Ripple all these years, which is really central in my opinion to the solution to this money problem, is the "clearing" of Ripple debt. Even this interledger concept of "escrow" is really a small semantic jump to "pre-clearing". My solution is really nothing but "flowing escrow" if you want to think of it that way. It accomplishes the same thing.
The "gimmick" of my solution is how I have solved the path-finding problem. I basically just determine that all are connected (some path exists between all nodes) and have devised an algorithm to distribute the "escrow" which I call "reserves" evenly.
Anyway, I got to go for now. But I'm willing to answer questions, problem maybe I should start a thread on it, if anyone's interested. I don't mind talking about it, Developing prototype is going to take a couple months. If someone wants to take a stab at helping, I'm all for sharing. There's only about less than 20 objects, and maybe 10 functions that will be in the prototype. It's very basic demonstration of principle oriented.
But I do feel that ultimately if you understand Ripple, and Interledger, then my solution could be thought of as something that simplifies path-finding with a "network of path exists" algorithm, together with a "escrow distribution" algorithm. Other than that its still just a Ripple graph of nodes connected to other nodes.
David