Ripple is centralized.
No it's not. Their network is decentralized. Sure they have pre-mine, but so do we.
Because Ripples exchange is distributed as opposed to centralized, the whole concept of co-location becomes fundamentally different. There is simply no central location near which you would co-locate for a speed advantage. Ripple exists on servers around the world, and anyone can easily spin up their own copy of a Ripple server for free. (The code is open source.)
https://ripple.com/blog/ripples-distributed-exchange-and-the-high-frequency-trading-arms-race/Maybe there are many nodes but their solution to the byzantine generals problem is the same one that has been used for thousands of years, central authority. If the ripple foundation was ever compromised than ripple would not be able to continue without them. That is precisely the problem that bitcoin solved and ripple unsolved.
Please expand?
I'm not a Ripple expert, but I believe the keyword is "distributed". Big difference. If they could claim decentralized, they would. My understanding is that all transactions on the Ripple network depend on trust relationships between gateways, which act as the authority.
Here's an article I found helpful when trying to understand Ripple:
http://blog.coinsetter.com/2013/04/29/virtual-currency-trading-wars-bitcoin-versus-ripple-xrp/Oh yea distributed sure. Decentralized is the hard part. I'm not a ripple expert either all i know is they don't use mining and if they had found a new novel solution to the byzantine generals problem than it would have made waves and i would have heard about it.