Great+Chain+of+Numbers+A+Guide+to+Smart+Contracts,+Smart+Property+and+Trustless+Asset+Management+-+Tim+Swanson

Open-Transactions
Chris Odom is a cofounder and CTO of Monetas and the lead developer of Open-Transactions (OT). 145
Open-Transactions is an open-sourced digital software suite that utilizes current technology to enable
trustless financial cryptographic interactions through privacy features such as blind signatures. It is also
portable and ledger agnostic allowing developers to bridge its applications to other cryptoledgers.
Many outside investors and businesses frequently ask Odom a theme on the same question, what
business solutions can be developed for this segment? Yet according to Odom, "asking what profitable
business opportunities there are for crypto currency is the same as asking that question for the Internet
in general. It is extremely broad in scope. I think we are talking about a transformative invention,
comparable to electricity, computers or the Internet. It's going to create all new spaces, and it's also
going to transform all existing sectors. While Open-Transactions currently is integrated with Bitcoin, it is
ledger agnostic because it is a financial crypto library, similar to how OpenSSL is a communications
crypto library. In terms of immediate opportunities, we have some bounties posted on CIYAM.org/open.
However, people should definitely be aware of risks. Cryptocurrency can be used in legal and illegal
ways, so it's not the currency itself, so much as how you use it. You just have to watch out for
regulatory compliance issues, and if those get too onerous, you have to look at moving your company to
another country. Some countries are less free than others. For an investor I might also point out some
of the unique propositions of OT, one being its ability to operate in a low-trust way, that it is federated.
And that it's also able to fill the gap and do the things that all the other servers do in the Bitcoin world
like the MtGox server, or the BitStamp server, or any of these Bitcoin services that use a server. Any of
them could be replaced in a lower-trust fashion, using OT at least, using OT as the financial engine, not
necessarily the web GUI pieces.”
One advantage that Open-Transactions has over conventional blockchains which have algorithmic delays,
is that because it uses known servers, Bob can trade near instantaneously. Whereas confirmation of
bitcoins, bitshares and other blockchain based instruments are measured in minutes, users can only
execute trades in those intervals as well. And if you can put OT on a distributed database, in theory that
means you can have cryptocurrencies that confirm instantly without centralized control as well.
Ripple
Ripple, commercialized by Ripple Labs, is a payments protocol that acts as a payment platform,
decentralized currency exchange, and smart contract network that can be used with any digital currency,
including Bitcoin. Ripple provides a solution for implementing an asset cloud via “trusted”
gateways. 146147 At scale, Ripple or Ripple like systems provide instant liquidity and exchange between
counter parties, where there can be a trustless exchange between 3 rd parties, and those 3 rd parties can
decide where their exchanged assets will settle within the network, such as any gateway who provides
redemption for the represented asset. In addition, unlike other payment platforms that use variants of
proof-of-work, it uses a consensus ledger which is distributed to a global network of servers. 148 These
servers continually receive transactions and proposals from other servers on the network and these are
compiled into a “Unique Node List” (UNL). Proposals from servers not in the network are discarded
while those remaining are vetted and algorithmically “voted” on by the servers. Once a consensus
(defined at 80% agreement on what transactions are legitimate) is reached, the server validates the
proposals and closes the ledger, creating a “last closed ledger” (similar to a block). The process then
repeats itself. This process takes roughly five to fifteen seconds allowing quicker transactions than
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