Ripple: the world's first distributed global currency exchange

Start-up OpenCoin , founded by E-Loan creator Chris Larsen and Jed McCaleb, who created the eDonkey file sharing network and the largest stock exchange Bitcoin Mt. Gox , around which there is so much noise the last few days, received investments from eminent venture capital firms to develop Ripple - the world's first distributed global currency exchange. Ripple also includes the concept of ripples (XRP) - a new electronic currency. The system will contain a fixed number of ripples. To be more specific - 100 billion.

According to the creators, their exchange will allow making payments in any currency, including Bitcoin, and has a minimum transaction fee ($ 0.00001), introduced only to avoid DDoS attacks. As stated on the technology description page :

While Ripple does not charge any commission for profit, each transaction requires a small amount of ripple (equal to 1/1000 of a cent) for security.
This fractional amount is required by the network to prevent someone from sending millions of transactions to boot the system. No one collects this amount. It is simply destroyed within the network. The effect is the same as if it were immediately redistributed among the holders of Ripple accounts.

In addition to the lack of commission, the exchange has a number of advantages, such as almost instantaneous transactions (their verification takes only a few seconds) and completely open source code of all system components.

In my personal opinion, the OpenCoin project has every chance of success and I will follow its development with great attention. Its creators seem to be just as enthusiastic:

We believe that Ripple will be able to change the idea of ​​what the world thinks and how it uses currency, providing universal access to a trusted, transparent and easy-to-understand financial instrument. We are pleased to welcome visionary investors and use their funds to expand our team and speed up the launch of Ripple.