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Providence Launches Pledger Club, an Electronic Signature Platform Using Ripple

Last Updated March 4, 2021 4:42 PM
Josiah Wilmoth
Last Updated March 4, 2021 4:42 PM
Providence Pledger Club
Providence

Cryptocurrency service Providence has launched Pledger Club, a new platform that allows users to sign trustless, electronic agreements using Ripple’s distributed ledger.

Providence Launches Pledger Club, a Cryptographic Signature Platform

Unlike more robust smart contracts platforms such as BitHalo, Pledger Club is designed for tacit agreements between individuals that do not warrant a full-scale contract. As CEO Jared Mimms of Providence explains:

Pledger Club is a simple way to crystallize tacit agreements. The platform enables the enforcement of any kind of discrete agreements between people without worry over perpetual programmatic execution or fees of proposed smart contract platforms. All actions take place at the payment protocol level.

Such tacit agreements could include things such as an agreement to repay a business associate for lunch or a friendly bet between friends. But Mimms anticipates users will also utilize the platform to claim attribution for work and to promote charitable causes.

People will use Pledger Club to take credit for work, close/enforce deals, and perpetuate causes they care about. Since the creator of the pledge may export emails, the virility of pledges made on the platform matters. Provable signatures means people who sign causal pledges care about the cause and want a path moving forward.

To create agreements, users must connect a funded Ripple wallet, which allows them to save their signatures in the platform’s decentralized ledger. One user creates the pledge and shares it via URL, and other signatories sign it with their Ripple wallets and unique signatures. Pledgers can choose to keep their agreements private, or they can share them using social media.

However, users should note that Pledger Club is not designed to facilitate large-scale contracts. There is no enforcement mechanism to encourage people to live up to their agreements. Rather, the platform serves as a way to prove that someone made a tacit agreement or to prevent someone from forging your signature by copying it from a scanned document and pasting it onto another.

Images from Providence and Shutterstock.