Ripple (XRP) Block Stars Episode by David Schwartz and Stefan Thomas Nostalgic Discussion

In the recent Block Stars Episode, David Schwartz, CTO of Ripple and Stefan Thomas, CEO of Coil discussed the early days of blockchain, and their time working together on the XRP ledger, Interledger Protocol and Codius.

They discussed about how the Bitcoin’s limitations inspired the XRP ledger.  Since both of them used to be working on Bitcoin before Ripple, what they had to say made absolute sense as it was based on real time experience. While both of them were impressed by the decentralized nature of the blockchain technology, they were able to identify some issues early on.  They preferred to fix them.

Any kind of change leads to Hard Fork.  When a change is proposed, there should be a consensus between developers and the network operators like the miners and full node operators.  This is important to avoid any kind of hurt to the network and to make the changes truly beneficial.

It is easy for anyone to propose a change, but to get it implemented is challenging.  Even if by nature of the decentralized nature, the changes get implemented, it is important to ensure that automatic upgrades do not affect the network.

And, everyone upgrading to the latest version with the change will leave the previous version incompatible. When someone is not upgrading this will lead to invalid blocks.  Considering all the difficulties hard fork is ensured only for critical changes. However, when the changes proposed are for good making the technology faster, better, and scalable – David and Stefan recall about how many of them did not want to take the risk of implementing the hard fork to achieve this.

The duo recollected on how David, Jed McCaleb, and Arthur Britto created an evolution of Bitcoin with the XRP Ledger.

Sydney Ifergan, the crypto expert tweeted:  “XRP Ledger is a positive change that help stuff progress beyond the Bitcoin limitations. Evolution to something better keeps happening in the blockchain space.”

Ripple XRP Ledger redesigned from Scratch

The XRP Ledger, they recall to be a completely redesigned system from scratch, built to be better, faster, and a more scalable version of Bitcoin.  It also provided with features which permitted it to support several other currencies.

The discussion also covered several other topics like smart tradeoffs with Codius, Paying it Forward with InterLedger (ILP), and stitching it all together through web monetization.  The discussions makes it clear to join the dots to create the internet of value making use of the XRP ledger, Codius, and Interledger.