“There’s currently no cost effective, practical way for people to pay per second to listen to music, access quality journalism or watch a film. But micropayments will allow us to pay as we consume, using tiny fractions of a cent that don’t impact our budget,” said research leader Prof. Radu State. Prof. State and his team intend to make such micropayments a reality through Ripple’s Interledger.
Interledger uses a network of “connectors” – each making exchanges in at least two crypto or fiat currencies – to allow people to route money seamlessly across the Internet and across financial barriers. For the money to find the cheapest route from source to destination, however, thousands of connectors will need to exchange continuous information about their exchange fees and liquidity. The research team will define how connectors exchange this information dynamically, allowing millions of payments per second to take the cheapest route through the network. “Connectors will make money by playing on exchange rates, and since cryptocurrencies are highly volatile we need to ensure that the network copes with this inherent instability,” says State.
Read more: uni.lu