The battle that is ongoing is between XRP and ETH. There is room for only one winner in my opinion. We will se which of the two will become the No 1 altcoin. Ripple seems to be on the fast lane and I think it is more attractive to new investors because it's cheaper and newbies will think it has more space for growth. So when altcoin season comes (there are signs of it, but this is still far from it), my bet is on XRP.
Are they mate? What kind of competition are you talking about because I do not see any here, there is no way that ripple can ever compete with Ethereum. When you look at both of them technology wise, Ethereum has a stronger technology, and when you look at them community wise, the community of Ethereum is very much better than that of ripple, also let us look at it from the angle of total market cap.
Forget that ripple is pumping xrp artificially, there is a limit to which they can pump the coin which will never be forever, and finally, which coin truly stands for the purpose of cryptocurrency decentralization, isit not Ethereum? So, tell me why you are exactly comparing the both coin when you should not be doing so? It is better you focus on Ethereum than ripple.