How to create more ripples?

1

What is the exact procedure for creating more Ripple currency units (XRP) in excess of the default 100 billion that already exist?

Manish

Posted 2013-04-26T04:31:58.797

Reputation: 1 972

Answers

4

There is no such procedure. While OpenCoin could accomplish it today by changing the code to create such a thing, in the future, the procedure would be as follows:

  1. Propose some kind of change that would create more XRP.

  2. Assign it a 256-bit ID. (It can be arbitrary.)

  3. Release patches that support this change, and announce their support for this ID.

  4. Get 80% of validators to run your patches.

  5. Wait out the two week waiting period for new feature enablement (to give a chance for review and vetoing).

  6. If 80% of validators (weighted by trust) still run your patch, the feature will enable itself and then you can create more XRP. Alternatively, you could try to convince about 50% of validators (weighted by trust) that your patch is so urgently needed that the normal supermajority delay process can be bypassed.

David Schwartz

Posted 2013-04-26T04:31:58.797

Reputation: 46 931

"Propose some kind of change that would create more XRP." This is a kind of transaction, right? A special kind of transaction. – Manish – 2013-04-27T22:01:40.990

No, step 1 would to be to suggest it to the community to build a human consensus. Otherwise, step 4 will never happen. – David Schwartz – 2013-04-27T23:28:10.843

Bringing out the tin foil hat now, my favorite part. So a government that controls 50% of the validators could start expanding the money supply. Would this be easy to detect by the other nodes? Could they do anything to stop it? For example, in Bitcoin terms, if there's a new "coinbase," maybe they could reject transactions originating from that coinbase, considering them as fake coins. I don't know ... this is my main concern with the cryptocurrencies. – Manish – 2013-04-27T23:47:52.520

1It would be trivial to detect. If they announced it as a proper change, everyone would know when it was properly enabled. If they did it secretly, the other 49% of the network would be unable to ever agree with them because the XRP levels would disagree. Plus, there's the total amount of XRP field in the ledger. You can trivially count the XRP in the ledger and compare (I do that regularly). And if any XRP "moved" there'd be a signed ledger with the before, a signed ledger with the after, and no transaction to justify it. – David Schwartz – 2013-04-27T23:52:49.027

So essentially in the worst-case scenario if the so-called government tried to do this covertly then it would just bring the network to a halt. – Manish – 2013-04-28T00:02:43.587

1Right, just like a 51% attack on Bitcoin. Except people could just stop using the compromised validators. So the manual recovery process would be simple. (It may even be possible to automate this process when it's clear which side is objectively wrong. The more insidious threat, if the aim is to disrupt the network, is to try to disrupt consensus without being so blatant.) – David Schwartz – 2013-04-28T00:05:00.703

This theoretically is true. But the change wouldn't be in secret, it would create 2 XRP networks, keeping totals for the original in tact, while the new network wouldn't be able to sell coins on, say, cryptsy, because that network doesn't own XRP, they own their own new currency, with a likely value of nothing unless they get plenty of support, causing people to invest in it.. – user2996650 – 2015-11-27T19:08:52.673

Asked: 2013-04-26T04:31:58.797

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Active: 2015-11-27T19:08:52.673