Is Ripple Centralized or Decentralized?

By Kapil Gauhar

The world of cryptocurrency has been heavily dominated by a huge list of digital tokens.

Gone are the days when Bitcoin was the only digital token in this particular market and it surely made a powerful place for itself.

With the advent of original solution of the blockchain technology in 2009, many new players entered in the digital market like Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, Litecoin and many others.

All digital currencies flourish on the decentralized nature of their particular platform enabling a peer-to-peer electronic cash transfer system for its users with no central point.

Though not all the digital coins could make a mark for themselves in the digital market, but Ripple made it like a pro by attaining the 2nd highest market cap (according to CoinMarketCap) in the crypto industry.

You May Also Read: Pros And Cons of Ripple

The Ugly Truth to Ripple

The current market valuation of Ripple has given it a power above the rest, and this is what makes it a major player in the crypto market.

Looking at this big picture may seem as too good to be true and that everything, for Ripple, is going to be just perfect. But there are some questions everyone has in their mind.

Is there anything completely perfect? Is there anything perfect with no drawbacks?

As said, there are two sides of every coin, be it crypto or fiat, one positive and the other is negative.

There is one ugly truth to Ripple too.

Analyzing the finer details of this platform, it comes as a surprise that this digital currency is in fact, not decentralized.

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Ripple Fails in its Ability to Mine Tokens

Yes, Ripple has no mining or miners, and that’s the truth. Ripple claims that mining slows them down.

Ripple’s this significant elimination of miners takes it away from the position of decentralized.

Furthermore, the lack of miners in Ripple network makes it impossible for its users to freeze the entire network. This is what completely robs Ripple of its decentralized position.

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Ripple’s Consensus Protocol

BitMEX, one of the most popular exchange desks, set up a research team to look into the Ripple’s consensus protocol.

And, you now what? They came up with some scathing findings.

  1. They reported several complexities in the consensus protocol.
  2. They couldn’t even make head and tail of the convergent properties, vital for the consensus system.
  3. Further in-house testing revealed, Ripple has complete control over its ledger making it centralized.

Sure, a system’s centralization isn’t a criminal offence. But Ripple claims to be a decentralized network in terms of its market strategies and services which ultimately means that it has been making their business on false misleading information.

You May Also Read: A Beginner’s Guide to Ripple

Lawsuit against Ripple

R3 Holdco filed a lawsuit against Ripple. The case would soon be shifted from San Francisco court to New York court resulting which, Ripple may have to go through some tremendous injury to its status.

According to the lawsuit filed against Ripple, Ripple failed to honor an agreement which would have given R3 Holdco the authority to receive $1 billion XRP from Ripple.

It is the decentralized nature of any platform that makes it qualify for such an independent form. However, this is not the case with Ripple. There is certainly a body in Ripple that has been dragged to the court thus reclaiming the fact that Ripple is not decentralized.

You May Also Read: Where and How to Store Ripple(XRP)?

Final Verdict

In spite of numerous marketing claims by Ripple glorifying its business as decentralized, there is a huge amount of contrasting evidence cementing the fact that Ripple is, in fact, centralized.

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Kapil Gauhar

Kapil Gauhar is the founder of Blogger’s Gyan. He is a Passionate Blogger, a Big Thinker and a Creative Writer. His passion for doing friendship with words and letting people know about the wonders of the Digital World is what motivates him to take writing as a career.

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