Does Ripple Control XRP? 'Absolutely Not,' Says Ripple CTO David Schwartz

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Ripple chief technology officer David Schwartz says XRP is an independent digital asset completely beyond the control of the San Francisco startup.

In a new ask-me-anything on Quora, Schwartz responds to the point-blank question of whether Ripple is pulling the strings on XRP.

“Absolutely not. The XRP Ledger is open source technology with a robust community of developers, so if Ripple were to vanish, XRP and the XRP Ledger will remain. By design, XRP is an independent digital asset and transactions are validated in a completely decentralized manner through the consensus process – which means the stakeholders in the network are the ones who collectively power the transactions, not any individual or entity.”

According to Schwartz, there are three fundamental characteristics that give XRP its independence.

Utility – XRP will continue to exist if Ripple disappears
Ownership – Owners of XRP don’t have ownership of Ripple, the company
Decentralization – Ripple owns 7 of more than 150 validators that power the XRP ecosystem

As for the fact that Ripple owns roughly 54% of the total supply of all XRP in existence, Schwartz says the company has taken measures to ensure it won’t flood the crypto market with XRP and effectively lower the price.

“While Ripple does own a portion of XRP, it does not give us control over the network. Our transactions have to be approved by the validators just like everybody else’s. At the end of 2017, the company placed 55 billion of the XRP it owns into a cryptographically-secured escrow account. This squashes any concern that Ripple would flood the market with XRP at once – which, by the way, would not be good for us either.”

Schwartz also answered a number of other questions during the ask-me-anything session, which you can check out below.