Ripple’s Director of Developer Relations on RippleNet, ODL, $XRP, and $XLM

On Monday (May 17), Matt Hamilton, Director of Developer Relations at FinTech firm Ripple, took the time to address some of the common misconceptions regarding the formation of Ripple, payment network RippleNet, On-Demand Liquidity (ODL), and digit asset XRP. He also explained the reason for the architectural similarities between XRP Ledger and the Stellar Network.

Although we are focusing in this article on some of Hamilton’s comments over the past couple of weeks, he has been helping to clear some of the confusion around Ripple, its products, and XRP ever since he joined Ripple in February.

Here is what he said back in January when his move to Ripple (from IBM) was announced:

• “Next month, I’m joining @Ripple on the @RippleX team. I’ve been interested in the XRP Ledger for a number of years and excited to help build the Internet of Value – the ability to move value around as easily as information will be transformational to business and society.“
• “For many devs, cryptocurrencies and payments are still seen as an arcane area – but there is lots of development on solutions that use the XRP Ledger. More and more use cases are being built on top of this tech, the community is already large, and we’re only getting started.“
• “My goal is to work with the community to help devs get up to speed and learn about the features + functionality of XRPL, and highlight the amazing work from existing developers. The most common reaction I get from devs is “I didn’t know the XRP Ledger could do that?!“
• “Let’s fix that! Developers, starting next month, you’ll be hearing from me A LOT. And I look forward to hearing from you. Comment below on what’s most important / challenging to you now.“

Anyway, below are highlights of some of the comments Hamilton has made on Twitter yesterday (May 17) in response to some of the FUD spread about Ripple and XRP:

• 07:53 UTC on May 17: “Each node is responsible for their own UNL. Ripple select the validators for theirs, The XRP Ledger Foundation select the validators for theirs, I select the validators for mine, you select the validators for you. It is decentralised.“
• 09:18 UTC on May 17: “… The XRP Ledger is a decentralised, permissionless, open network. Anyone can use it for anything they want. Coil, Cinnamon, Audiotarky use it for monetizing content Forte uses it for gaming XRPL Labs use it for peer to peer payments“
• 09:23 on May 17: “XRP Ledger: A decentralised, permissionless, open blockchain… XRP: the native asset of the XRP Ledger… Ripple: A FinTech company headquartered in San Francisco that uses XRP/XRPL in cross border payment systems“
• 09:35 UTC on May 17: “What about smart contracts? No the XRP Ledger doesn’t have them on-chain right now, but they are coming via the hooks amendment. Literally some individuals wanting to use the XRPL for some other purpose.“
• 11:31 UTC on May 17: “The XRP Ledger does not use proof of stake. So ownership of coins has nothing to do with control. The XRP Ledger does not directly financially reward participants, this helps avoid the centralisation as seen in Bitcoin. Anyone can run a node.“
• 17:44 UTC on May 17: “3 bitcoin developers created the XRP Ledger and the consensus protocol to be a “better bitcoin” based on Bitcoin not being sustainable, energy-wise. 100B XRP was issued at the inception of the XRP Ledger. No new XRP can be issued…“
• 17:51 UTC on May 17: “… Paypal: centralised – you can be banned from using it, you can have your funds siezed, you can have your transactions blocked XRP Ledger: decentralised – you cannot be banned from using is, you cannot have your XRP seized, you cannot have your txns blocked“
• 19:04 UTC on May 17: “XRP was designed by some Bitcoin developers to be a ‘better Bitcoin’. It was designed to do the same thing (peer to peer payments with no central authority) but without the energy usage. They then formed a company, Ripple, that went on to develop a SWIFT replacement using XRPL.“
• 19:05 UTC on May 17: “… XLM was a fork of the XRP codebase (Jed McCaleb was involved in both). So XLM has virtually the same architecture as XRP.“
• 20:48 UTC on May 17: “XRP, XLM – both are usable for whatever you want to do with them. That is the beauty of decentralised, permissionless networks.“
• 21:05 UTC on May 17: “XRP is the native asset of the XRP Ledger XLM is the native asset of the Stellar network If you want to make a payment on either you use either the native asset or you issue an IOU and settle it some other way.“
• 21:07 UTC on May 17: “They [i.e. banks] do [use XRP]. That is what Ripple’s ODL product is. If you make a payment using that, then it buys/sells XRP on the open market and transfers it over the XRP Ledger.“

DISCLAIMER

The views and opinions expressed by the author, or any people mentioned in this article, are for informational purposes only, and they do not constitute financial, investment, or other advice. Investing in or trading cryptoassets comes with a risk of financial loss.

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