Photo: Ripple
According to the recent announcement made by Vanessa Pestritto, the director of Xpring at Ripple, Xpring will be backing XRPL Labs, a new company created by entrepreneur Wietse Wind, the avid XRP developer. XRPL Labs is working on a number of projects, including a decentralized exchange, mobile wallet and cold storage operating system.
Having gained an undisclosed amount of investments from Ripple, Wietse will now be able to work full time together with his two employees, Tristan and Ali, to develop applications for the XRP ledger.
I cannot describe what I feel right now, but I’ll try … 😳 Starting today @baltazar223, @ThisIsTRISS and I will be officially working full time on building a few killer XRPL apps… Thanks to Xpring funding 😎🎉https://t.co/dhgErN2EBl
— Wietse Wind (@WietseWind) February 13, 2019
According to Vanessa Pestritto, the Xpring team sees its major is focus on growing the ecosystems around the Interledger Protocol and XRP Ledger. This high pupose requires to work closely with developers that share the company’s vision of interoperable blockchains and new use cases for XRP. Wietse Wind is such a developer. As Vanessa Pestritto wrote in her blog post on Medium:
“He has built a technology consulting company, which serves numerous clients ranging from large scale companies to smaller offices. He’s also built and ran a software company that provided a platform as a service for rapid web development. We are thrilled to announce that Xpring has invested in Wietse Wind’s XRPL Labs.”
Apart from XRPL Labs, Wietse has independently created the widely used XRP Tip Bot, which allows users to transfer XRP to one another via Twitter, Reddit and Discord. He also uploaded the entire XRP ledger to BigQuery, allowing the crypto-curious to browse transaction history and perform deep dives into the ledger’s data.
Some major XRPL Labs projects include: a DEX UI, which allows users to trade XRP with IOUs or vice versa; a 100% Air-gapped cold Storage OS, which stands for improving security; and a Signing platform, where interested parties can interact with the XRP ledger straight from their Android or iOS smartphones.
According to Ripple, the funding is designed to give Wietse the time and space to develop independent projects of his choosing, without direct oversight.
Ripple (XRP) isn’t a Real Cryptocurrency
XRP as we know is the native coin of the Ripple ledger. During the recent months it has gained many significant listings in world’s major exchanges, as well as has successfully collaborated with big companies. Among the latest ones, it can be mentioned that Western Union has decided to test solutions offered by Ripple for its settlements services. Almost at the same time, the XRP-Based Remittance Startup SendFriend has managed to raise $1.7 Million from the investments made by Ripple, MIT Media Lab, Barclays, the Mastercard Foundation and others.
But, despite the Ripple’s latest success, its cryptocurrency still remains controversial. The Coinmotion exchange, based in Finland, which has recently listed XRP, has released a blog post titled: “XRP is a Centralized Virtual Currency.” According to the exchange, XRP is not a typical cryptocurrency, is not backed up by a traditional blockchain, and that it is heavily centralized in the hands of parent company, Ripple Labs.
The exchange claims that Ripple doesn’t use a blockchain to secure transactions, but instead uses a method known as HashTree which is patented by Ripple Labs:
“In HashTree all the transactions and balances are combined to a single number, which servers compare to each other to reach consensus. This kind of system is faster than blockchain, but far more centralized.”
This case is not the first one in Ripple’s history. From time to time such opinions hit the XRP’s reputation, calling it centralized. Even though, the cryptocurrency continues to be the third most valuable in the world after Bitcoin and Ether.
*To learn more about XRP coin, Ripple company, and their innovative solutions, please check out our awesome guide.
