I am just surprised at what could make you to create so much interest in a coin like this, to defend it, even when you are not a hodler of it.
I can confidently say that i invest in XRP and yet, despite that, i still see it as a centralized coin, because the larger part of it is controlled by some circles of people, most especially those in the team. There are also other reasons attached to it.
Hahaha, I know this seems like the typical shill thread. But I do this for a lot of projects. I make posts on reddit about Litecoin, Bitcoin, Cardano, Ethereum you name it. I don't hold any of them. Purely interested in technological criticisms.
Yeah, I understand that perspective. Would you consider coins like Bitcoin with large "whales" to be centralized for similar reasons? What projects in your opinions achieve decentralization the best?
Becuase most of the contributor in the Ripple network is owned by the Ripple company itself, that's all I need to conclude that Ripple is not decentralized. Then someone maybe claim it happen because ripple is forced to do it since the crypto community already have bad judgement to ripple and they can't gather the contributor from the community. But the actual thing is that the requirement to be network contributor in Ripple is too high, and that is the manipulation used by ripple to make their network stay centralized.
By contributor do you mean as a node that processes transactions or as a developer? Yes that is a fair criticism that all development is handled by Ripple as a company. But with a transparent code base and with anyone being able to be a validator, is that really a problem? Plenty of projects have developers who do great work and don't get paid nearly enough. Also the vast majority of people who contribute to Bitcoin for example do so through mining and running nodes and using it for transactions, developers are by far in the minority. However I'd love to see future projects be funded by a community pool that's managed by elected delegates (not sure if anyone's doing this yet) to make that aspect of projects less centralized also.
1. In the past as per I have learned from this forum, we have frozen out some XRP addresses so that the holder were unable to move their coins. I am sure still they can lock out our funds if they prefer.
2. Sometimes back they charged up to $20 for one XRP address to hold XRP. But, not sure whether it was only on few exchanges nor how it was implemented.
3. Basically no mining is possible. Mining is one method for how other decentralized systems are making sure about not having one central authority.
4. XRP devs (or some higher officials) keep claiming that their system is more decentralized than any other crypto but never seen any proof. When it is really decentralized then there will be no need to keep on emphasizing the same.
That first point is very interesting, having the ability to lock people out is a major red flag for me personally. Could you link me to anything relating that as I'd love to learn more about it.
Yeah charging for addresses is bad as well, whole point of digital currency is to bank people with no barriers to entry.
Well to be fair you don't necessarily need mining to make a system decentralized. Unless your critical of other consensus methods, which is of course a valid concern.
I think this is what you're referring to:
https://ripple.com/insights/the-inherently-decentralized-nature-of-xrp-ledger/ Yeah, I'll believe it when I see it too, seems like a PR thing mostly.
1. The Ripple Company owns the majority of coins.
2. The developers are from the company.
3. The company can do whatever they want. There is no split since there is no chain.
4. It's not free to participate in the network (to validate tx), the company does that.
Yeah there's very little community governance of the protocol to be fair. Very valid criticism.
Well anyone can become a validator so that fourth point isn't really true. Unless I've misinterpreted.
Considering Ripple is the company and XRP is their ticker, I don't see how it is not centralized. They literally own most of the XRP tokens themselves and give out to other places themselves as well, when they are starting to work with a bank or whatever company they agree to work with they give XRP to them to use for transactions to make their transactions faster. As a technology it is much better than the current system for banks but as crypto currency that doesn't fly around here.
We do not need coins that are centralized in a way that a whole company can control so much of one coins life. Ripple company can literally say "we are closing shop, we are bankrupted" tomorrow and XRP will die in a minute, that basically shows how much XRP is tied to that company and its success, as long as Ripple is getting bigger, XRP is getting bigger, as soon as Ripple closes shop XRP goes away as well.
Yeah I appreciated what their tech can do for cross border payments and the like as well but your second point about a central point of failure is very true and is actually the main reason I don't hold any XRP.
When the developer is holding on to larger percentage of the whole tokens, if the whole tokens in circulation is diluted the whole market-cap will be more than BTC, do you people feel Ripple should be more valuable than Bitcoin. I have seen arguments in support of Ripple but for me the whole design of the tokens prove otherwise
Personally, I think BTC has more inherent value than Ripple but then again valuations of crypto is also speculation so who knows?
Cheers everyone for your perspectives.