The big news in bitcoin lending has always been the removal of the bank.Services like BTCJam facilitate peer-to-peer (P2P) loans using borrowers' real-world identities.But not everyone is interested in tying their real-world identity to their finances.The new subreddit FairShareLoans is attempting to make micro-loans without the bulky identity process.Creditworthiness of the borrower is determined by his Reddit karma and account history.The borrower is expected to pay back the bitcoin loan, with interest, within 30 days.But the subreddit's moderators seem to be taking on all of the risk themselves at this point (though they do accept donations to their lending fund).During the six days that FairShareLoans has been active, approximately 100 loans have been requested, ranging from 20 bits to 900,000 bits.Some users have posted about their experiences, citing that they've already paid back their loan and are excited about the potential of the subreddit.The FairShareLoans subreddit is an extension of FairShare, which is a “plan to build a global, voluntary-stateless basic income.” It's not immediately clear how making loans contributes to the goal of a cryptocurrency-funded basic income, however.

Perhaps the moderators plan to use their lending profits to finance a basic income fund?Whatever the end goal, FairShareLoans is a small and potentially successful demonstration of the wide array of possibilities within P2P cryptocurrency lending.Did you enjoy this article?You may also be interested in reading these ones: Students Could Save 17% on Loans by Paying with Bitcoin Pure-Central Facilitates Peer-to-Peer Crypto Lending Bitcoin Mind Map: Cryptocurrency Education Finally Made Simple?Username * First Name Last Name Email * Password * Repeat Password * You registration completed successfully.Confirmation email sent to email address provided.Email * Password *Get an affordable loantoday!Follow a few steps and get your first loan!Join the thousands of borrowers around the world!Learn more > 0 0 $0 0 How does it work?Apply for a loan Your loan is being funded Grow your business!Rootstock, a P2P platform based on the block chain that implements smart contracts using the capabilities of Ethereum with the transparency and security of the bitcoin network, is negotiating with the World Bank and some Latin American banks to provide microlending for the unbanked, according to the International Business Times.

Rootstock hopes to give banks the means to issue loans from smart contracts.Rootstock combines the capabilities of Ethereum with the bitcoin network’s transparency and security by using sidechain technology.Bitcoin serves as the fuel that runs the smart contract.Nick Szabo, an expert on smart contracts, has said Rootstock joins the best of bitcoin and Ethereum.evolution bitcoin drugsRootstock’s official launch is scheduled for Dec.bitcoin pleads guilty4 and 5, 2015 at LaBitconf in Mexico City .bitcoin price widget androidBecause bitcoin has matured as a technology, it has allowed Rootstock to focus on use cases like microlending, according to Diego Gutierrez Zaldivar, Rootstock co-founder.38 gh/s bitcoin

He said Rootstock wants to target Latin American needs and launch Rootstock with real use cases with companies seeking to execute smart contracts.Rootstock has been speaking with The World Bank, Banco Ciudad de Buenos Aires and other banks such as the Brazilian development bank, BNDES, he noted.There is also a group called SystemaD within the Latin American Bitcoin NGO that is working on financial inclusion.ethereal para windows 7 64 bitsThis group is testing the technology in Sao Paulo and Buenos Aires slums.linux bitcoin mining osZaldivar said Rootstock is designing tools to operate micro lending programs for the unbanked with a higher level of transparency.He said a smart contract platform that is neutral and secure enough to run such a platform are key components.Developing the platform with NGOs so that anyone with a smart phone can use it will take between two and three years, he said.

The project is not strictly a technological solution as there is a cultural aspect involved.It is necessary to explain at a bank how to run a loan from a smart contract.In addition, it is necessary to be able to exchange crypto tokens for each country’s actual currency.The concept is to join an Ethereum-compatible virtual machine that relays on the bitcoin network to secure operations using sidechain technology and merged mining.The project has evolved from earlier projects by Sergio Lerner, Rootstock co-founder, such as NimbleCoin and QixDoin, the Turing complete currency released in 2013.What is new about Rootstock is that it creates economic incentives in addition to the way it leverages the bitcoin security model.Zaldivar said the block chain is secured using merged mining and a federation, which he called a hybrid model.Previously, security models used a federation, a mining network or a proof of stake.This is the first time federated and proof of work security models have merged.

Merged mining refers to miners using the hashing power used to secure the block chain to create blocks in a different block chain.By using the same calculations to secure both block chains simultaneously, it is not necessary to have added power and the same hardware can be used.It is necessary to convince miners to merge mining the different block chain as well as bitcoin’s.Improvements have been made to the software to prevent any loss in profitability for miners when they merge mine Rootstock, Zaldivar said.Previously, coins like Namecoin fell from merged mining since they had a negative impact on bitcoin miners’ profitability.Bitcoins locked in a bitcoin address turned into “rootcoins,” the currency in the Rootstock block chain, fuel Rootstock’s smart contract execution, Zaldivar said.He noted the sidechain is a two-way mechanism.When miners receive the rootcoins as payment for executing a contract, they can convert them into bitcoins immediately.There is a one-to-one conversion rate.

The bitcoins in the Rootstock block chain are called rootcoins to indicate they exist in the Rootstock block chain and not in bitcoin’s.The federation is needed in the beginning since trustless, two-way sidechains have not been fully implemented in bitcoin yet, he said.The pegging mechanism going from bitcoin to rootcoins will be trustless and automated on the Rootstock side.The federation will manage the process that returns to bitcoin.Also read: Ethereum enters last phase of development process Ethereum’s development team examined the technical feasibility of placing Ethereum as a sidechain and reached the same conclusion based on the Blockstream white paper.Gavin Wood, Ethereum’s chief technical officer, said it was not going to be possible to sufficiently secure the sidechain.Unless the bitcoin miners are persuaded to merge mine, it would not be possible to incentivize enough miners on the sidechain to prevent an attack in which someone gives an invalid block that releases bitcoin on the main chain and mine it themselves with sufficient mining power to outmine the remainder of the network that is attempting to say it is invalid, Wood said in an interview.

Rootstock’s federation will form from exchanges and wallets, while merged mining gives the miners a chance to profit from the execution of smart contracts with the new infrastructure they already have, Zaldivar said.He said the effect will be to make bitcoin more valuable.The Rootstock server connects directly to the pool software and can deploy in any mining operation, he said.Rootstock will set up some servers at the start to ensure there are sufficient nodes servicing the queries.To add Rootstock to a mining operation will require marginal cost, he said, and the profits might surpass that which miners receive from transaction fees currently.He said Rootstock can surpass this in one or two years with the execution of smart contracts.Some have compared Rootstock to Counterparty, which uses the bitcoin network and a native token called XCP to perform smart contacts.Adam Krellenstein, who co-founded Counterparty with Robby Dermody and Evan Wagner, said in an email to International Business Times that while the Ethereum project is interesting, its codebase is “a long way” from being ready for production.

He added that merged mining’s economic incentives are such that miners of the parent chain can freely attack the sidechain.Zaldivar said Rootstock has advantages over Counterparty.He said its Virtual machine offers just-in-time compiling with up to 100 times improved contract execution.It also has Web3 support to allow easy integration with Distributed Apps that possess rich user interfaces and higher user interaction rate since blocks validate every 20 seconds as opposed to the standard 10 minutes that Counterparty requires.Asked what he thinks of private block chains that banks are backing, Zaldivar said he calls it “Legacy 2.0.” A permission-based block chain has an internal database, a shared database among many entities that loses transparency to the outside world.There is better transparency within a group of organizations branding the private block chain, he said.However, it does not carry the neutrality and security of a proof of work network, an open network, which bitcoin has.