Ricerc@Sapienza

Distributed exchange systems are radically changing how we trade money for assets, services, or goods. Ripple, in particular, is unique in its kind. It is based on consensus and trust between its users, and it stores their accounts and their transactions on a distributed ledger. It allows exchanging currencies (e.g. Euro, Dollar, etc.), physical goods (e.g. cinnamon, or truffle), and also assets or shares. Its transactions usually complete in a handful of seconds, no matter where their destination is. For all these reasons, Ripple is attracting the increasing interest of banks, financial institutions and economic businesses. Today, it is the second most used distributed exchange system.
In this project, we aim at thoroughly analyzing Ripple. Among other things, we investigate how it is used and its relation with the other financial markets. We study how it was attacked in the past and we test the robustness of its payments network. We challenge the anonymity of its users. We consider to what extent their privacy can be jeopardized by analyzing their Ripple transactions, and whether their accounts on multiple exchange systems can be linked together. In addition, we focus on the consensus protocol that guarantees the safety of the system, and on the users that participate to it.