According to U.Today, David Schwartz, the Chief Technology Officer of Ripple and a key architect behind the XRP Ledger (XRPL), recently addressed a significant misconception about the ledger on the social media platform X. An X user named 'Anders' questioned Schwartz regarding various documents from different organizations that described XRPL as 'permissioned,' 'semi-permissioned,' or 'trusted.' Schwartz dismissed these descriptions, stating, 'I think it's nonsense. A lot of things about blockchains really matter, but how specifically they happen to solve the double-spend problem is pretty much irrelevant. What possible effect does it have?'
Schwartz's response aims to clarify the decentralized and open nature of the XRP Ledger. The terms 'permissioned,' 'semi-permissioned,' or 'trusted' suggest a level of control or restriction that does not align with XRPL's actual structure. Unlike traditional digital assets, XRPL uses a unique consensus protocol managed by independent validators rather than a central authority. This protocol ensures that all valid transactions are processed without requiring a central operator or a single point of failure. Users of the XRP Ledger can agree on the latest state and the order of transactions, allowing the ledger to progress even if some participants join, leave, or behave inappropriately.
The consensus protocol is designed to address the double-spend problem, which is the challenge of preventing someone from spending the same digital money twice. Schwartz's statement underscores that the method by which blockchains solve this issue is less important than the fact that they do solve it. This clarification comes ahead of Schwartz's first appearance at the Permissionless conference, where he will speak on institutional decentralized finance (DeFi) on the second day of the event.
At the time of writing, XRP, the native cryptocurrency of the XRP Ledger, had seen a 1.07% increase in the last 24 hours, reaching a value of $0.566.