According to U.Today, Ripple CTO David Schwartz has addressed the ongoing debate surrounding the classification of XRP Ledger as a blockchain. In response to tweets, Schwartz argues that XRP Ledger not only meets but exceeds the foundational criteria of blockchain technology. The debate over what constitutes a true blockchain has been contentious, with purists and innovators often at odds. Critics point to various aspects of XRP Ledger, including its unique consensus mechanism, as reasons to doubt its status as a decentralized blockchain.
XRP Ledger utilizes a unique consensus algorithm called the Ripple Protocol Consensus Algorithm (RPCA), which relies on a group of trusted validators to authenticate and validate transactions. In a recent discourse, a user claimed that XRP was not a blockchain but rather a distributed ledger. The user also stated that because transaction hashes are linked, it could be called a blockchain, but it was different from traditional proof-of-work (POW) or proof-of-stake (POS) decentralized blockchains.
Schwartz, one of the original architects of XRP Ledger, maintains that XRPL meets the definition of a blockchain. To support his claim, Schwartz shared a screenshot of a statement from one of his earlier blog entries from 2018, in which he outlined what a blockchain is. According to Schwartz, 'A blockchain is a series of states of a distributed ledger where each state, except the first, contains a secure reference to the prior state and sufficient information to demonstrate that the transition from that prior state is valid according to the system’s rules.' On the other hand, a distributed ledger is a database that has no single authoritative copy, with the integrity of the data depending on the contents of the data rather than the source. Despite Schwartz's explanation, some critics are likely to remain skeptical of XRP's classification as a blockchain, which he appears indifferent to, saying, 'But if people want to disagree, that's cool too.'