Reality of Ripple - centralized or decentralized?

[cybersofts]

Ripple has been around for years and always been in the top 5 of cryptos yet I have no idea what its purpose is.

I need to do some research into that.

All I know is it is related to banking/banks in some way.

Same thoughts which back in the past i dont really bother about that Ripple thingy on what are the things that is useful on it but as majority being said here specially to those who are really cryptoenthusiast this thing is really centralized which investors do have involvement with banks or any other centralized instutions which means price might be affected or somehow can be manipulated.

Ripple is a coin which was invented for the banking usage and it was accepted by more than 500 banks all over the world so it maybe controlled by the banks so it is not decentralized coin.But people are investing on ripple due to the recent price bump but in future the riplle price will crash more so it is better to stay away from ripple and better to invest on ethereum or litecoin.

Ripple will likely prove to be more useful than Bitcoin in the long run. Bitcoin's network is crippled by capacity issues, and the plan to "solve" it is the Lightning Network, which is a centralized system run off the blockchain. That is, the proposed solution to Bitcoin's network congestion is for Bitcoin to be less like Bitcoin and more like Ripple. So any criticism of Ripple in that regard is hypocritical because Bitcoin will soon be employing the same tactic. Second, Ripple was created to utilize Blockchain to solve issues banks face in value transfer, and it is already backed by some of the largest financial institutions in the world. It's the implementation of blockchain's potential, just without the bloat and expense of running it on Bitcoin's woefully inadequate blockchain. In a comparison of which system is better, Ripple will prove superior, and I expect Ripple and other alts to eventually pass Bitcoin in marketcap as Bitcoin continues to fail at what it was initially set up to do, and perhaps as soon as before the end of 2018.

Yes, you are also right, jaysabi.
But the problem with ripple is the centralization, the ripple has a company and CEO behind it that can control the number of coins in circulation because of that they can manually pump and dump the ripple price in the market to scam people and run away with their money.

[shield132]

Ripple has been around for years and always been in the top 5 of cryptos yet I have no idea what its purpose is.

I need to do some research into that.

All I know is it is related to banking/banks in some way.

Same thoughts which back in the past i dont really bother about that Ripple thingy on what are the things that is useful on it but as majority being said here specially to those who are really cryptoenthusiast this thing is really centralized which investors do have involvement with banks or any other centralized instutions which means price might be affected or somehow can be manipulated.

Ripple is a coin which was invented for the banking usage and it was accepted by more than 500 banks all over the world so it maybe controlled by the banks so it is not decentralized coin.But people are investing on ripple due to the recent price bump but in future the riplle price will crash more so it is better to stay away from ripple and better to invest on ethereum or litecoin.

Ripple will likely prove to be more useful than Bitcoin in the long run. Bitcoin's network is crippled by capacity issues, and the plan to "solve" it is the Lightning Network, which is a centralized system run off the blockchain. That is, the proposed solution to Bitcoin's network congestion is for Bitcoin to be less like Bitcoin and more like Ripple. So any criticism of Ripple in that regard is hypocritical because Bitcoin will soon be employing the same tactic. Second, Ripple was created to utilize Blockchain to solve issues banks face in value transfer, and it is already backed by some of the largest financial institutions in the world. It's the implementation of blockchain's potential, just without the bloat and expense of running it on Bitcoin's woefully inadequate blockchain. In a comparison of which system is better, Ripple will prove superior, and I expect Ripple and other alts to eventually pass Bitcoin in marketcap as Bitcoin continues to fail at what it was initially set up to do, and perhaps as soon as before the end of 2018.

Yes, you are also right, jaysabi.
But the problem with ripple is the centralization, the ripple has a company and CEO behind it that can control the number of coins in circulation because of that they can manually pump and dump the ripple price in the market to scam people and run away with their money.

That's why I don't trust ripple. You mentioned correctly, there is a team behind it which controls it, so this coin is centralized and centralization is against crypto, this means ripple will never be considered as a leader in crypto industry and I think number of it's users will decrease.
If bitcoin wants to be leader, it needs some modifications or otherwise my bet for ether or litecoin.

[krishnapramod]

Ripple is in no way decentralized, but too centralized with RippleNet owning a whopping 62% of the total XRP coins in existence, but again this goes well with their purpose, to act as an intermediary between financial institutions/banks and cross-border payments. Being centralized is a flaw, secondly to make it really big, Ripple would have to be adopted by as many financial institutions as possible, SWIFT would be the biggest challenge. Here's an interesting article on 5 alarming reasons Ripple might not be what you think:

https://hackernoon.com/4-alarming-reasons-ripple-might-not-be-what-you-think-9debc3c86985

[rb3rg]

99% of people don't know what is centralized/decentralized, most of the times they make a terrible mistake thinking decentralized means the transaction is done by a 3rd part (ie. nodes in the network)
 Decentralized / centralized can be defined (not limited) by:

1) Governance: Who controls it ?
2) Issuence and Distribution: Who creates & who sells it? mining? Someone create (from nothing ) and decide how much and when to "dump" it.
3) Custody: Where it is kept,
4) Audit system: How do you make sure the thing really works (Public / Private)
5) How transaction is processed: Self explained. Public Nodes / Private system.

To be decentralized all 5 items has to be achieved in such way (4,5 : Public)

Let's compare:
USD
1) US Central Bank (FED)
2) FED
3) Banks / FED
4) FED
5) Banks (Private)

Bitcoin/Ethereum/zcash/Monero/ etc:
1) Developers, Miners (If you don't like what is going on be free to fork it, the best idea wins)
2) Mining
3) You
4) It's all in the Blockchain
5) Miners/Segwit (all public nodes)

Ripple/Stellar/Iota/Neo:
1) Private Company / small group of people (damn that's a game over for me)
2) Private Company / small group of people (game over again)
3) You
4) Public Ledger? (someone confirm please!)
5) RippleNet (There are talks about they will open to public nodes)

The two more important items (1 and 2) to define a decentralized system is not achieved by Ripple, Stellar, IOTA and many others.
Honestly in my option all crypto that can't be mined then it will have a group of people who can manipulate it at any time, this include the PoS (rich gets rich theory)

Please let't me know what I'm missing.

[Komobit]

Am I wrong os Stellar is the descentralized Ripple?

https://www.finder.com/ripple-vs-stellar-lumens

'Ripple vs. Stellar: How they work
Stellar was initially based on Ripple systems, with the aim of redesigning the global economy for more inclusiveness. But citing the complexity of the system, Stellar later redesigned itself with a brand new system of its own.

Both facilitate international payments but do so in very different ways.'

[rb3rg]

Am I wrong os Stellar is the descentralized Ripple?

https://www.finder.com/ripple-vs-stellar-lumens

'Ripple vs. Stellar: How they work
Stellar was initially based on Ripple systems, with the aim of redesigning the global economy for more inclusiveness. But citing the complexity of the system, Stellar later redesigned itself with a brand new system of its own.

Both facilitate international payments but do so in very different ways.'

Lumens in Stellar are issued in the "giveaway" system that is not pretty clear to me.
Bottom line, Someone control the distribution.

Again, People think decentralized is the way the transactions are processed. This is wrong. 

[JuniAiko]

Ripple will need to convert itself into a non-profit organization first, instead of a for-profit mega corporation controlling the whole Ripple network, for it to be accepted as decentralized.
Even if they distribute their servers and network, they will NOT be decentralized since the whole network is still being controlled by a single entity, which powers not just the XRP tokens, but also their other products aimed at serving big banks.

Stellar's giveaway system is part of the code. It distributes fees collected back to the community automatically at predictable intervals.
It aims not only to provide now fee, instant international transfer of funds, but also function as a decentralized bank and exchange itself (rather than becoming a tool of mega banks that have crashed the world economy several times already). It is increasingly being adopted in third world countries, by the people, small businesses, and small banks.

It is also now a part of the massive NEO-ecosystem (which includes Elastos, Ontology, NeonExchange, Trinity Network, OnChain, Qlink, and so on..)..

[alani123]

Ripple is very centralized and that's part of its infrastructure. It is a crypto made to service banks so it doesn't really make much sense to call it decentralized. It was made for quick settlement and doesn't add much value in the sense of a trustess system. In fact, I think that ripple needs even more trust than using a simple bank because it requires additional trust to the foundation behind it for its integrity...

[Heroonnone]

Ripple it's centralized cryptocurrency. I didn't invest in this coin, because each centralized system has a chance become scam. I think evryone should use ripple only for speculation.

[Mister1k]

Ripple is very centralized and that's part of its infrastructure. It is a crypto made to service banks so it doesn't really make much sense to call it decentralized. It was made for quick settlement and doesn't add much value in the sense of a trustess system. In fact, I think that ripple needs even more trust than using a simple bank because it requires additional trust to the foundation behind it for its integrity...

They have involved in wide range of bank and it subsidiaries mate. For investors it may give the short term profit. With in some years if ripple damaged CEO may comes sell all the coins he has holded now. As news leaked about XRP it has been hodled by CEO which is 80 percent and more.

I want ripple should go away from the top 100 list of crypto currency. Actually I feel they are threat for other crypto currencies next to ethereum mate.

[jhean_arcane]

Ripple is very centralized and that's part of its infrastructure. It is a crypto made to service banks so it doesn't really make much sense to call it decentralized. It was made for quick settlement and doesn't add much value in the sense of a trustess system. In fact, I think that ripple needs even more trust than using a simple bank because it requires additional trust to the foundation behind it for its integrity...

They have involved in wide range of bank and it subsidiaries mate. For investors it may give the short term profit. With in some years if ripple damaged CEO may comes sell all the coins he has holded now. As news leaked about XRP it has been hodled by CEO which is 80 percent and more.

I want ripple should go away from the top 100 list of crypto currency. Actually I feel they are threat for other crypto currencies next to ethereum mate.

I very much want them to go away. But this is the attempt of centralized authorities to adopt the changes in this world. The future is now and if decentralization of money is fully realized, banks will become obsolete so they try to make themselves relevant in cryptocurrency. However, as I see it, Ripple is like an infection to the Decentralization System.

[fauzan Ichsan]

Ripple is very centralized and that's part of its infrastructure. It is a crypto made to service banks so it doesn't really make much sense to call it decentralized. It was made for quick settlement and doesn't add much value in the sense of a trustess system. In fact, I think that ripple needs even more trust than using a simple bank because it requires additional trust to the foundation behind it for its integrity...

They have involved in wide range of bank and it subsidiaries mate. For investors it may give the short term profit. With in some years if ripple damaged CEO may comes sell all the coins he has holded now. As news leaked about XRP it has been hodled by CEO which is 80 percent and more.

I want ripple should go away from the top 100 list of crypto currency. Actually I feel they are threat for other crypto currencies next to ethereum mate.

I very much want them to go away. But this is the attempt of centralized authorities to adopt the changes in this world. The future is now and if decentralization of money is fully realized, banks will become obsolete so they try to make themselves relevant in cryptocurrency. However, as I see it, Ripple is like an infection to the Decentralization System.

only ripples that move like that, like enemies in blankets, if ripple comes in and in the future not with decentralized system, then i think ripple will be shunned by cryptocurrency investors, so that price will go down

[Stavri]

First of all i want to mention that xrps are not pratically cryptocurrencies of ripple project.
And the answer is it is not decentralized because lack of anonymity and controling of transaction power.

[cryptocastle007]

There is a lot of accusations that ripple is more of centralized crypto which

these are not accusations, these are facts!

• supply is in full control of a small group, the  creators behind it which are banks. they control almost all of it but technically they have more than 60% of the supply. that is 60 billion coins * ~$2 = $120 billion
• there are not nodes run by peers! which is exact contrast of a decentralized network. instead the nodes are run by Banks and Ripple Labs
• here is the best part: Ripple Labs can "freeze" your account aka your funds. they did it with John McCaleb funds who was the co-founder of ripple!
  

interestng. thanks for sharing.
can you explain to me the specific characteristics that make a coin centralized? Does having mored than 50% of the coins make it so?