Quick overview

---

David Schwartz, CTO of Ripple, stated that the XRP Ledger (XRPL) was purposefully created to be uncontrollable by the company or any one entity.

His comments followed Cyber Capital founder Justin Bons’s assertion that XRPL is essentially centralized and permissioned, which sparked a lengthy discussion in the cryptocurrency community about what decentralization really entails and whether validator lists constitute hidden control.

Networks like Ripple, Stellar, Hedera, Canton, and Algorand depend on permissioned elements, according to Bons’ post on X on February 24. He asserted that Ripple and its foundation have “absolute power and control over the chain” thanks to XRPL’s Unique Node List, or UNL, and that deviating from the published list could result in a fork.

Schwartz disagreed, stating that the description was “objectively nonsensical.” According to him, XRPL nodes choose which validators to believe on an individual basis and won’t consent to censorship or double-spending unless their operators do.

Schwartz did concede that validators could work together to stop the chain from the standpoint of honest nodes, but he asserted that they can’t impose double-spends. He likened the possibility of node operators switching to a different UNL in this scenario to altering Bitcoin’s mining algorithm following a majority attack. Ripple must adhere to U.S. regulations, the XRPL co-architect added in response to regulatory pressure. He contended that XRPL was purposefully created in order to prevent Ripple from censoring transactions.