XRP Ledger

P2P Protocol

A decentralized public ledger using its own Byzantine Fault Tolerant consensus algorithm (distinct from both PoW and PoS — validators vote on transaction ordering via the XRP Ledger Consensus Protocol), operational since 2012. Naming precision: this entity is the XRP Ledger (the protocol/network), not "Ripple" — Ripple is a company that "acts as a steward for the technology" (confirmed directly from the rippled repo's own README) but does not own or unilaterally control the ledger; a team of developers "at Ripple & other organizations" maintain the reference software.

Company
Links
Visit Website Suggest an edit

Details

License ISC
Dev Status 🟢 Active
Owner No single owner — rippled (the reference server software) is developed by "a team of full-time developers at Ripple & other organizations."
Governing Body Validator-based amendment voting (on-chain governance mechanism where a supermajority of trusted validators must approve protocol changes) — but Ripple the company remains highly influential as the largest single contributor to core development and a major validator-list curator.
Country N/A (Ripple, the primary corporate steward, is US-based; the ledger itself has no jurisdiction)
Start Year 2012
Stack C++ (rippled, the reference server implementation).
Funding Ripple (the company) funds the majority of core rippled development; other organizations also contribute.
Last Investigated Aug 24, 2026

Use Case Domains

Platform Evolution & Sovereignty

P2P Protocol Attributes

Origins Purpose-built payments/settlement ledger, operational since 2012, using its own consensus algorithm from the outset (not PoW/PoS-derived).
Database N/A conventional DB; JSON-RPC/WebSocket APIs for node queries.
Query Language JSON-RPC/WebSocket.
Data Formats Binary canonical serialization format specific to XRPL.
Collaborative Live Editing N/A
Rich Text Editing N/A
Mobile Support Via third-party wallets (Xumm/Xaman, etc.).
Web Support N/A directly; wallet ecosystem provides access.
Native Apps rippled ships as a binary.
Terms Free, open-source; tiny fixed transaction fees (fractions of a cent) which are burned (destroyed) rather than paid to validators — distinctive versus every other entity in this batch.
Funds Ripple (the company) holds a large, publicly-disclosed XRP reserve and funds the majority of rippled development — a material, disclosed dependency worth naming directly.
Based On Novel consensus design from inception; not forked from a prior chain.
P2P Architecture Validator network using the XRP Ledger Consensus Protocol — validators exchange proposed transaction sets and converge via iterative rounds requiring an 80% supermajority, not mining or staking.
Overlay Network Global; the validator set is permissionless to join, though a "Unique Node List" (UNL) of trusted validators (influenced by Ripple's recommended list) is what most participants actually rely on for practical trust.
Content Addressing No.
Local-First N/A
E2EE N/A
CRDTs Lib N/A
Byzantine Fault Tolerance Yes — the XRP Ledger Consensus Protocol, a novel BFT design distinct from PoW/PoS, providing ~3-5 second finality.
Signature secp256k1 or Ed25519 (both supported).
Permissions Permissionless for transacting; the practical validator trust set (UNL) is influentially, though not exclusively, shaped by Ripple's recommendations.
Semantic Web Compatibility No.
Smart Contract Limited — no general-purpose smart-contract VM historically; "Hooks" (lightweight, WASM-based transaction logic) is a more recent, narrower addition rather than a full programmability layer.
Protocol Stack Position Base-layer settlement (Layer 1), purpose-built for payments/asset issuance rather than general programmability.
Asset / Value Embedding Native (XRP) plus a built-in issued-currency/asset-exchange layer (the XRPL's native DEX) — assets other than XRP are a first-class ledger feature, not a smart-contract add-on.
Protocol Maturity / Standardization Mature — "10+ years of error-free, uninterrupted performance" per xrpl.org's own claim — no formal external standards body, but one of the longest continuously-operating non-PoW/PoS ledgers.