Interledger Connecting blockchain to other ledger

Blockchain has become very popular technology among the IT people. People have been able to identify its potential and future scope. Still blockchain is in his early days and every days something new work is been done to make this technology much better. Blockchains have several feature likes of the decentralized database, speed, scalable, security and less costly.

Cryptocurrencies are the major product that has used blockchain technology efficiently like Bitcoin, Eitherium, Litecoin, Blackcoin, and ripple etc.

One visible problem that occurs during exchange the currency what you have to what you want. E.G. if you have $10 then you want bitcoin against it or you have 1 bitcoin and you want Eitherium of the same amount.

So to make this happen we build online exchanges that will change one currency to other. Right now existing application does so many work manually or by using smart contracts. But what if we have a configurable connect ready for this purpose. That will lots of time, money, will be more trustable and no transaction fee. Interledger has introduced world about this concept.

What is Interledger?

Interledger is a protocol which connects two ledgers and allows to make payments in different form to actual form. It provides configurable connector between two ledgers and uses routing tables to reach actual destination. Using interledger network one can send money to different network  and it not limited to money network but it has very large scope like blockchains, micropayments.  It is very secure, fast, no transaction fee and scalable.

How does it work?

Interledger protocol used escrow services to hold money during payment and routing table algorithms to communicate with the receiver. When user A initiates transfer to the user B then amount is get deducted from user A's account and held in the escrow and when user B confirms transaction via fulfilling routing algorithm then money is credited to user B' account. In case of failure money is sent back to user A's account. It does not charges for the transaction fees because it asks for the preprocessed or charged fee. Pay once and use many times.

Escrow: 

Escrow is a services which holds information for the temporary purpose and allows security from fraud. It holds money until a certain security condition is fulfilled then releases the payment to receiver, in case security failure payment will be refunded back to sender'account. It is a third party that manages fund between two money transaction parties.

Routing Table:

Routing table plays very vital role in interledger as these contain information about who is receiver and who is the sender and who to communicate with the receiver from the sender.

It contains following information:

1. Sender's address
2. Receiver's address
3. Amount 
4. Routing address.

Routing address contains internet address type things E.G. wf.rx.ab.jn

here wf is the region where user want to send money. rx is sub-region like state where user want to send money. ab is the user who is sending money and Jn is user who is a receiver.

We can add as many information on routing address separated by dot(.).

so when sender sends money to receiver then that communication is done by routing table inside routing address. For multiple money transfer network chaining of the interledger protocol can be done.

Interledger has been mostly implemented in javascript.Some basic implementation is given below.

Send Money

import { SPSP } from 'ilp'
import PluginBells from 'ilp-plugin-bells'

const plug = new PluginBells({
  account: 'https://example.com',
  password: 'xyz'
})

SPSP.quote(plug, {
  receiver: '[email protected]',
  destinationAmount: '0.01'
}).then((payment) => {
  payment.memo = { message: 'Your money!' }

  return SPSP.sendPayment(plug, payment)
}).then(() => {
  console.log('Sent!!')
})

Receiving Money

import PluginBells from 'ilp-plugin-bells'

const plug = new PluginBells({
  account: 'https://example.com',
  password: 'xyz'
})

plug.connect().then(() => {
  plug.on('incoming_fulfill', (transfer) => {
    console.log('Received ' + transfer.amount + '$!')
  })
})

Javascript full implementation reference: https://github.com/interledgerjs

Java Implementation reference: https://github.com/hyperledger/quilt

You may also like: Hyperledger introduction

Thanks