WHAT IS RIPPLE?
The first thing to know is that Ripple is both a platform and a currency. The Ripple platform is an open source protocol which is designed to allow fast and cheap transaction.Unlike Bitcoin that was never intended to be a simple payment machine, Ripple is definitely going to rule all the international transactions worldwide. Pretty ambitious, but who knows? Maybe currency exchanges will disappear in a few years like Blockbuster stores did.
The platform has its own currency (XRP) but also allows everybody to use the platform to create their own via coinswitch
What is CoinSwitch?
CoinSwitch is a cryptocurrency exchange providing the best way to invest in cryptocurrencies by aggregating all leading exchanges and comparing cryptocurrency prices in real time.They support over 275 cryptocurrencies, digital currency, altcoin, cryptocoin with more than 45000 pairs for exchange.
what is XRP?
Despite the emergence of cryptocurrencies, a lot of teething troubles with our financial systems remain. International payments are still slow and cumbersome, and the world, in general, isn’t warming up to compete with cryptocurrencies fast enough. This is of course because institutions aren’t picking up this new technology quickly. This is what Ripple intends to change with its XRP tokens.
who created XRP?
he protocol as a working prototype was created away back in 2004.
But the real history starts in 2013, when Jed McCaleb, the creator of the EDonkey network invited a bunch of world rank investors to invest in Ripple Labs.
XRP development
The protocol builder of Ripple, OpenCoin was founded by CTO Jed McCaleb and CEO Chris Laren. Both of them were into Bitcoin previously, much like all other developers in the company.
The XRP token was launched in January 2013.
In September of the same year, the company changed its name from OpenCoin to Ripple Labs.
In October 2015, Ripple Labs became ‘Ripple’.
what are the benefits?
Unlike any other cryptocurrency, XRP is not based on conventional blockchain technology. Instead, the Ripple blockchain makes use of the concept of HashTree to summarize data into a single value. This value is then compared across its validating servers in order to provide consensus.
When someone wants to initiate a transaction on the Ripple network, they are expected to specify which gateway (institutions, or individuals) they are connected with to the recipient, or ripple account holder.
Validators on the network then receive these transaction details and vote on them based on their legality according to the rules of the network. Once a majority of the network’s node agree on the transaction, it is executed
It is important to note that the XRP token itself is not used to send funds. Instead, the network simply works by generating transactions consisting of IOUs (document acknowledging debt/due payments). It is the execution of such transactions that use XRP tokens as fuel.
With every transaction, some amount of these XRP tokens get exhausted forever. So the amount of XRP tokens will consistently decrease as the network load increases.
XRP is different from other cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum.** It is not mined the way other tokens are mined, instead, it was issued at the time of inception**.
A total of 100 billion XRP tokens were issued by Ripple company.
