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Bootstrapping the Interledger

The bootstrapping project is an effort to get real-money moving on the Interledger. We plan to achieve this through 3 initiatives:

Bootstrap a network of dial-up ILP users by making it very easy to run a connector and/or wallet.
Focus on low value use cases so we can move real-money at low risk.
Leverage the permissionless nature of cryptocurrencies to introduce ILP-enabled ledgers and institutional connectors (exchanges).

Initiative 1: Dial-up ILP

We need to build out our community of ILP enthusiasts and contributors and make it easy for them to move from simply contributing code and ideas to actually participating in the network. The vision is something akin to meetups and PGP key-sharing events where people who are running a node (connector) come together and establish peering relationships that ultimately form the start of the Interledger network.

A peering relationship is just two connectors agreeing to route transactions through one another. In an ideal world there would be lots of ILP-enabled ledgers where connectors could place liquidity and peer with other connectors that also hold accounts on that ledger.

In the absence of this, nodes can peer by using the ILP Connector Kit which maintains net positions of other connectors in a local ledger and allows them to settle these via an external channel like Paypal, ACH or some crypto-currency.

The only difference between this arrangement and one where there is an ILP-enabled ledger between the nodes is that instead of the two nodes trusting the ledger to comply with the protocol they must trust each other because there is only a virtual ledger between them.

Since we are asking nodes to trust one another it is likely that nodes will peer with people they know or keep the trustline limit very low.

We can seed this process by facilitating in-person social interactions of enthusiasts and encouraging them to peer with one another so we encourage the community to run local meetups to gather other enthusiasts and start building a local Interledger subnet. If this goes well, local communities will emerge around this movement in the same way that LocalBitcoins evolved to connect geographically co-located Bitcoin traders.

With well established geographically centred subnets it only takes a few nodes providing connectivity across these subnets for this to evolve into a global network of networks, the Interledger.

It is likely that if we can demonstrate the value of this initiative to the crypto-currency community then that will be fertile ground to seed the network. Many crypto-currency networks such as Lightning and Raden have similar goals to ILP but are limited by the fact that they can only operate on the back of blockchain-based ledgers. If we can establish a number of connectors that provide access to these networks the knock-on effect and reach could be game-changing.

What can you do?

So you're keen to be a part of this revolution in global payments, what can you do?

1. Run a node

The best thing you can do to start growing the network is run a node and the easiest way to do this is to use the purpose built ilp-kit. Obviously, if you're up to it you could build your own node using other components from the reference implementation or even build your own.

Here are some detailed instructions on how to run a hosted node: https://github.com/interledgerjs/ilp-kit/blob/master/docs/SETUP.md

You can find a list of known nodes to seed your peering list with here: https://github.com/interledgerjs/ilp-kit/wiki/Known-ILP-Nodes

Make some money

If you believe in ILP and want to see the network grow then run a node, but if you're just interested in being an early adopter, growing your network of peers and possibly making some money then this is also an opportunity to do that.

Connectors can charge a fee for their services and while we want to bootstrap the network as a low cost network for low value payments we believe that the Interledger will eventually underpin most payments just as the Internet underpins most communications today.

Building a good network of peers and establishing a reputation as a reliable and high performing connector is a great way to get in early potentially be a major node in the Internet of Value.

Stay Liquid

If you have marketed your node well and have peered with some other nodes processing large volumes of transactions you'll need to keep a close eye on your liquidity.

As soon as you run out of liquidity on a specific route you can no longer process transactions so it's worth being proactive in monitoring this. One of the goals of this early p2p network is to begin to test strategies for managing liquidity and maturing our processes in this regard.

Be safe

We're moving real money but the goal is to test the capabilities of ILP not overthrow the world's existing payment networks over night. Use the network for small value payments while we use this opportunity to test the protocol and address any issues that arise.

Nobody is going to come to your aid if you are not careful and peer with other nodes without doing your due diligence and then losing large sums of money so be responsible and let's only use small value payments.

We're building a neutral, decentralized payment network that is currently outside the remit of traditional regulators and banks because it is entirely peer to peer. As the community we should be responsible about how we use it so that it continues to grow.

2. Peer with other nodes

To do something useful with your node you'll need to peer with other nodes. This gives your peers access to each other through you and ultimately to any other node.

Peering in most p2p networks like Bitcoin is easy because the node software has ways to automatically find peers, ILP is different and each time you create a peering relationship you need to trust that peer (or find an ILP-enabled ledger to use as your common pool of liquidity).

Have a party!

To leverage the network effect in building out the Interledger we need to appeal to our immediate networks and build small communities of peered ILP nodes. If you're interested in organising a meetup send an email to the mailing list to find other people in your area then meet up and peer up.

3. Make some payments

TODO - Describe using ilp-kit wallet to make p2p payments

Be an ambassador

Next time you owe somebody some money, instead of using Venmo, Paypal or cash ask them if they're on the Interledger. If not then you can help them join by being their first peer and using the money you owe them as their opening credit line.

Just like every other network that has grown from nothing before, significant growth will come from a viral effect. Some of us still remember a time when the question "Are you on email?" was all too common...

Initiative 2: Focus on Low Value use cases

Micropayments and low value person to person payments are an ideal way to bootstrap the network. The low values of each payment mean it's easier to manage exposure and risk as we mature the network.

Establishing the Interledger and using it is a typical chicken and egg problem. Building ILP into applications is easy with the existing components but until there is a working Interledger it is purely academic. Likewise, it's difficult to justify standing up nodes on the network if there are no applications using the network.

Micropayments

We've already demonstrated how easy micropayments could be with Interledger for both streaming payments and payments built into the browser.

If you have a content platform or a content consuming client application enable payments via ILP.
If you have an interesting new use case that is enabled through micropayments, building it on ILP.

An interesting way to test the network using micropayments may be for a charitable cause like Wikipedia or OSS software. In this case failures are more tolerable as we continue to experiment and

Person to Person payments

A particularly appealing use case for a p2p payment network is low value person to person payments. It would be possible to use the ilp-kit wallet to make these payments but it would be even better if existing wallets looked at how they could add ILP to their mix of services.

Every wallet should have one or more ILP addresses and the wallet provider should run a connector to facilitate sending and receiving.

Other ideas for easy p2p payments are IM integrations like a Slackbot that can quickly send a small payment using ILP, or the integration of payment capabilities into any existing service that connects users to one another. The advantage of using ILP for this is that it is independent of wallet/funding source so someone could send Bitcoin and the receiver could accept USD in their Paypal account.

Low value retail

Work on a simple Payment Method Spec for an ILP-based payment method that can be used by the W3C Payment Request API has begun here: https://w3c.github.io/webpayments/proposals/interledger-payment-method.html