Ripple is a decentralized platform that allows digital and fiat currencies to be transferred across international borders on the same network without an intermediary, in real-time. Ripple is known for its digital payment protocol and XRP, its native cryptocurrency.
The platform, which was developed and promoted by Ripple Labs, has two main components: RippleNet and XRP Ledger (XRPL).
RippleNet is a network of financial institutions that use Ripple’s technology to enable cross-border transactions. XRP Ledger is a decentralized, open-source blockchain that processes and verifies transactions on the network.
Overview of Ripple
Ripple is a centralized financial technology (fintech) company that builds different products to solve global payment issues through its remittance system, payment settlement, and exchange. The company began as Ripplepay, founded by software developer Ryan Fugger in 2004. This period was before Bitcoin, the world’s leading cryptocurrency, came into the spotlight.
Ripple was later co-founded by Chris Larsen and Jed McCaleb in 2012.
The goal behind the company was similar to the vision of Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto. This was to foster an easier, faster, and more secure way to make transactions globally. However, the benefit of Ripplepay was that it didn’t rely on the blockchain; instead, it was centralized.
Ripple and Ripplenet
Ripple Labs developed Ripple’s blockchain infrastructure in response to Bitcoin technology in 2012. RippleNet, the resulting payment network, was designed to provide banks with a faster, more cost-effective, and streamlined option for conducting cross-border transactions.
RippleNet is a real-time gross settlement system, a currency exchange and remittance network, and the company behind the XRP ledger (XRPL), which facilitates payments through its XRP. It represents an alternative to the SWIFT network, aiming to transform and speed up cross-border funds transfer through blockchain technology.
By removing the multiple layers necessary for SWIFT to operate, RippleNet enables an end-to-end transfer process lasting minutes. It provides transaction transparency and near instantaneous settlement status.
RippleNet was initially broken down into a few different offerings:
- xCurrent, which is a bank-focused payment system
- xRapid liquidity provider through XRP
- xVia, allowing customers to connect and combine the previous two services via its application programming service (API) — a set of tools for building application software
The Role of XRP in the Ripple Ecosystem
There is often confusion between the XRP token and the Ripple ecosystem; however, these are two distinct entities. Ripple is the network used by banks to settle cross-border and remittance payments and facilitates the exchange of fiat and digital currencies.
XRP is Ripple’s cryptocurrency token, which is used to transfer funds across borders at a low cost — trustlessly and instantly. Its primary use is to serve as a bridge currency to offer financial institutions a more cost-effective way to exchange both crypto and fiat currencies.
Any currency or asset can be used to transact on the Ripple Network, which doesn’t need XRP to function. However, XRP provides liquidity when necessary, acting as a bridge between two currencies.
Through on-demand liquidity — one of Ripple’s services that use XRP to provide liquidity in cross-border transactions — RippleNet removes the need for pre-funded accounts. Such a solution allowed Ripple to partner with remittance players and banking giants like Santander, Bank of America, and American Express.
XRP serves as an intermediate exchange mechanism between two currencies or networks.
Ripple Alternatives
IBM Blockchain
IBM Blockchain Platform, built on Hyperledger Fabric, is designed to help businesses across a variety of industry verticals. These include supply chain, financial services, healthcare, and other sectors. They can also model, create, and operate networks with the security necessary for multiple use cases.
The platform lets managers quickly develop blockchain skills by leveraging popular tools and languages, such as Java, JavaScript, Go, and more.
Key features of the IBM Blockchain Platform include smart contracts, network management, multi-cloud architectures, hardened security stack, and HSM key protection. The application allows permissioned users of a decentralized business network to update the policies that govern the network.
Teams using the IBM Blockchain Platform can create, test, and debug smart contracts and monitor and manage resources on the network. The platform enables organizations to streamline their other Fabric components with the console and connect to nodes running in any environment.
Additionally, it allows businesses to manage their peers and other Hyperledger Fabric components by selecting from a variety of deployment options based on the ecosystem’s needs for compute performance and isolation.
Ethereum
At its core, Ethereum is a decentralized global software platform powered by blockchain technology. It is most commonly known for its native cryptocurrency, ether (ETH).
Ethereum is designed to be scalable, programmable, secure, and decentralized. It is the blockchain of choice for developers and enterprises creating technology based upon it to change how many industries operate and how we go about our daily lives. Ethereum can be used by anyone to create any secured digital technology. It has a token designed to pay for work done supporting the blockchain. Participants can also use it to pay for tangible goods and services if accepted.
Ethereum is the second-biggest cryptocurrency by market cap after Bitcoin. It is a decentralized computing platform that can run a wide variety of applications — including a universe of decentralized finance (or DeFi) apps and services.
Like Bitcoin, Ethereum is an open-source project that is not owned or operated by a single individual. Anyone with an internet connection can run an Ethereum node or interact with the network. However, Ethereum differs from Bitcoin in its ability to build and execute smart contracts.
Smart contracts enable a vast ecosystem of applications on Ethereum, such as stablecoins (which are pegged to the dollar by smart contract), decentralized finance apps (collectively known as DeFi), and other decentralized apps (or dapps).
Stellar
Stellar is a proven blockchain network that leads the way in compliance and is built for interoperability between global payment systems. With the goal of enhancing the global financial system, not supplanting it, Stellar has always been built and designed to make it easy and efficient to move currency internationally.
Stellar allows users to build credit through their everyday purchases, opening opportunities not just to build their credit score, but also to gain financial security for themselves and their families. The platform consolidates users’ bills and allows them to build credit through the bills they pay, then reports their monthly payments to credit bureaus.
Stellar makes it possible to create, send, and trade digital representations of all forms of money: dollars, pesos, bitcoin, pretty much anything. It is designed so that all the world’s financial systems can work together on a single network.
Oracle Blockchain Cloud Service
The Oracle Blockchain Cloud Service is an enterprise-grade, pre-assembled, open, and open standards-based Blockchain platform. Its underlying framework is based on Hyperledger Fabric, a project that has been developed under the Linux Foundation umbrella.
Oracle offers a rock-solid BaaS platform, where all the underlying platform and IT governance complexities are properly addressed as required. These include security, backups, failover, high availability, decentralization, consolidation of metrics, and monitoring among many enterprise features and other non-functional requirements.
The Oracle Blockchain Cloud Service is a perfect PaaS service and platform for successful Blockchain adoption efforts and strategy aligned with the common requirements of the enterprise, B2B Blockchain systems.
Swirlds
The Swirlds software development platform goes beyond blockchain. It provides capabilities not previously possible with existing technology, to build and run shared worlds. These include fully distributed applications that harness the power of the cloud without servers.
With Swirlds, developers build applications that rapidly achieve consensus. This results in fair, fast, proven, and efficient transactions without any single point of failure.
Swirlds removes the obstacles inherent in blockchain technology. Blockchain is inefficient and does not enforce fairness. It can be challenged with high latency and probabilistic consensus, which often requires costly and wasteful mining.
In contrast, with Swirlds, transactions are:
· Fair: As Swirlds does not rely on miners, Swirlds applications ensure the actual order of transactions is the consensus order, and all transactions are included.
· Fast: Swirlds does not require “proof–of–work.” Transactions happen in milliseconds, instead of minutes or hours.
· Proven: Developers and users quickly receive absolute proof of the consensus results of their actions for 100 percent order certainty.
Leveraging the hashgraph distributed consensus algorithm, the Swirlds platform enables developers to efficiently create always-available, serverless distributed applications of unlimited scope and scale.
Tangle
The IOTA Tangle is an innovative type of distributed ledger technology (DLT) that is specifically designed for the Internet of Things (IoT) environment. The IOTA technology is based on a new type of DLT, not the traditional blockchain model. It was created by the IOTA Foundation, a non-profit foundation incorporated and registered in Germany.
The design limitations of existing blockchain systems for some applications led to the development of virtual currency alternatives that could be used to serve different purposes. IOTA Tangle was developed to enable micro-transactions without fees for the growing ecosystem of IoT devices. IoT devices are network-enabled devices, including products such as smart appliances, home security systems, and computer peripherals. They also include wearable technology, routers, and smart speaker devices that have Wi-Fi connections, Bluetooth connections, or near-field communication (NFC).
Tangle was created with the promise of high scalability, no fees, and near-instant transfers.
Bitcoin
Bitcoin is a digital currency that operates free of any central control or the oversight of banks or governments. Instead, it relies on peer-to-peer software and cryptography.
In much the same way you would keep traditional coins in a physical wallet, virtual currencies are held in digital wallets and can be accessed from client software or a range of online and hardware tools.
A public ledger records all bitcoin transactions and copies are held on servers around the world. Anyone with a spare computer can set up one of these servers, known as a node. Consensus on who owns which coins is reached cryptographically across these nodes rather than relying on a central source of trust like a bank.
Every transaction is publicly broadcast to the network and shared from node to node. Every ten minutes or so these transactions are collected together by miners into a group called a block and added permanently to the blockchain. This is the definitive account book of Bitcoin.
Bitcoins can currently be subdivided into seven decimal places. A thousandth of a Bitcoin is known as a milli and a hundred millionth of a Bitcoin is known as a satoshi.
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