The XRP Ledger (XRP) is an open-source, public, and decentralized layer 1 blockchain that is managed by a global community of developers. However, it has been criticized in the past for being too centralized, with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission saying that Ripple Labs sold an unregistered security being the most well-known example. Ripple has made this metaverse news public to clarify the situation.
Critics point to the fact that XRP was first given to Ripple and the fact that the XRP ledger doesn’t work well. In May 2017, Ripple announced a plan to make the XRP Ledger more decentralized and make sure that no one entity has operational control over it.
At that time, the organization switched to validator manifests, made validator security better, and used the new Dynamic UNL infrastructure to publish a recommended Unique Node List (UNL). The company also said that independent validators would be added to the recommended UNL.
“During that time, for every two independent validators that are added in the recommended UNL, one Ripple-operated validator will be removed,” the company said in February 2018. “The end state will be a network with a varied set of validators, operated by multiple entities from different locations, all sharing one common goal: the long term health and stability of the XRP Ledger.”
XRPL achieves major decentralization
The XRP Ledger has recently reached this important milestone for decentralization. The XRP Ledger Foundation put out its latest UNL recommendation yesterday. A marketplace for both physical and digital art, called Aesthetes, has been added to the XRP Ledger Foundation’s UNL list. A Ripple node, on the other hand, has been taken off the list.
The XRP Ledger node on the dUNL tweeted, “Ripple is now down to 1 validator on published UNLs out of 34 (2.9%), and no one entity has more than 1 validator on the UNL.”
Along with the Ripple validator, the University of Korea validator was also taken off the list. According to the report, its operator had been “unavailable for weeks” and was on a list of “negative unique nodes,” which includes validators that are temporarily offline because of system crashes or maintenance.
“We are aware that the number of validators in our published UNL has gone down marginally from 35 to 34 with these changes. We are confident that we will increase the list size in our next update,” the XRP Ledger Foundation continued.
What’s the aim of Ripple?
On the XRP Ledger, all nodes make sure that transactions follow protocol rules and agree on an order that keeps people from spending the same amount of money twice. The validator lists are UNLs.
At the moment, Ripple, the XRP Ledger Foundation, and Coil are known for putting out recommended standard lists of high-quality validators. But each server operator can pick their own UNL, and rippled, the server software that runs the XRP Ledger, uses Ripple’s list by default.
Even if Ripple recommends its mailing list, it doesn’t create a centralized system because people have to sign up for the list. If the company stops doing business or does something bad, participants can change their UNLs and use a list from another issuer.
XRP Scan says that the default UNL is made up of a single node from the company being sued by the SEC. The rest are exchanges like Bitso and Bitrue, universities like London’s Global University (UK), University of Nicosia (Cyprus), and University of Waterloo (Canada), XRP ecosystem entities like Gatehub, Flare Network, XRP Scan, Towo Labs, and Bithomp, and others like AT TOKYO, Flagship Solutions Group, and Brex.
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