New donation pool to raise funds for Ripple development
A new donation pool has been created to raise funds for development of the Ripple project, with an initial contribution of $500.00. The final amount will be donated to the Ripple project to support the development of a standalone Ripple server to provide open decentralized payment through the Ripplepay site as well as other services using Ripple. All content created will be released under an open license.
Ripple is an open payement system that allows users to make agreements between each other freely, and to use those agreements as a fully functional currency in the wider community. This distributed financing model allows users to get better rates, while dealing with known and friendly sources. At the same time, it easily integrates with existing financial systems, allowing for the use of multiple currencies and the involvement of both new and traditional monetary actors.
The goal of the donation pool is to kickstart development on a project that has recently been dormant. After an initial surge of activity, the project remained quiet for some time as participants searched for ways to get more people actively using their system. The system itself currently works, although it does not yet offer all the functionality envisioned by the project’s volunteers. Interest in the project has recently renewed, and with it comes a renewed desire to see the project grow in ways that will allow the general public to make considerable use of Ripple as an open payment network.
Developing the standalone Ripple server will result in improvements to the software design and code, and the new architecture forms the basis for a number of new features, including integration with various popular services. Ryan Fugger of the Ripple project describes it as “an open-source Ripple server that would be an automated clearing house for alternative (including personal) currencies.” The new work would also incorporate the work of OpenTransact, another project which provides an open specification for financial transactions.
Raising funds to develop Ripple is very important at this point to enable safe and easy transactions. As confidence falls in traditional forms of currency, more people will need an improved payment system that is open and user-oriented, decentralized, and secure and usable. Only by building the tools now can we adequately prepare this type of system, and Ripple promises to offer this full functionality if the resources exist to support it. Ripple can do for money what open source software has already done for other areas like operating systems and network servers.
View the donation pool now, and pledge any contribution, here:
ripplexchange.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=12
