Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum (ETH), spoke with Bankless on December 19th, said Ripple’s XRP “was still completely centralized.” He also added:
“XRP has not apologized for claiming that Bitcoin and Ethereum are Chinese-controlled.”
Buterin contends that a project must employ cryptography and possess certain features in order to consider itself a member of the crypto realm and have “some kind of chain data structure somewhere.”
In response, Buterin was chastised by Ripple Chief Technology Officer David Schwartz for being ignorant of the distinction between Ripple and XRP. Schwartz stated on Twitter that:
All this time and he still doesn't understand, or is pretending not to understand, that Ripple is a company and XRP is a digital asset. He thinks XRP can say things!
— David "JoelKatz" Schwartz (@JoelKatz) December 19, 2022
Buterin has already angered the XRP community, and this is not the first time. He argued earlier this year that because Ripple wanted to dominate Ethereum, China, XRP had forfeited its right to protection from the cryptocurrency community.
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) allegedly gave Ethereum a free pass due to corruption, according to claims made by the Ripple community.
Are Buterin's Arguments About Centralization Accurate?
The association between XRP and Ripple has given rise to ongoing claims that the digital asset is centralized from the crypto community.
While XRP is the native coin of the XRP Ledger (XRPL) network, Ripple is a cryptocurrency payment corporation with a focus on blockchain technologies for institutions. Coinciding to their website, the XRPL is “based on an inherently decentralized, democratic, consensus mechanism — which no one party can control.”
Additionally, based on the facts at hand, Ripple only has authority over 4 of the more than 130 validators powering XRPL.
Critics also tend to point out that Ripple holds most of the XRP token. However, its recent report stated that the firm’s XRP holdings have declined below 50% of its total supply. The company added that each validator on its network “gets one vote regardless of how much XRP they own.”
