[Opensim-users] Money in OpenSim-Worlds [was: Bitcoin]

[Edmund Edgar]

Interesting stuff. But if I'm reading it right what you're suggesting
isn't really decentralized in the way BitCoin is, because a server has
the ability to sign money and the other servers have to trust the
money it signs.

Making an online currency work without a trusted authority that can't
be subverted by any single abusive node is quite a difficult problem,
and AFAIK BitCoin is the first implementation that's really solved it.

With the BitCoin model we _can_ do real, decentralized transfers with
real money (BitCoins are real money), which the server responsible for
inventory transfer etc can verify without needing to be either the
payer or the payee. I think we can do this without hacking the client,
at the cost of a less-than-seamless user experience.

The big downside I'd see, apart from having to hack the viewer
software to make the user experience nice, is that BitCoin transfers
take a bit of time to confirm. In some contexts this will be a real
killer. ("You paid 0.01 BitCoins to upload this texture, come back in
an hour to use it".)

Inevitably I think in practice we'd have to short-circuit this process
one way or another - either by accepting transfers before they're
confirmed in certain contexts, or by doing a hybrid thing where a
little bit (but not too much) of your money is stored in the
traditional Linden way as your balance on a trusted server,
represented by a number in a database which you hope whoever manages
the server won't lose.

-- 
Edmund Edgar
Founder, KK Social Minds
Educational Technology for the Web and Virtual Worlds

ed at socialminds.jp
+81 090 3912 3380
Skype: edmundedgar
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http://www.socialminds.jp