What is Ripple, XRP, RippleNet, XRP ledger...?

What is Ripple?

Ripple is a technology company that provides the most efficient solutions for sending money globally using blockchain technology. Ripple was launched with an ambitious goal: to enable the “Internet of Value” (IoV) to move money as easily as information is moved today.

Originally named Opencoin and renamed Ripple Labs in 2015. Ripple is the company that created the Interledger Protocol which underpins their global payments network, RippleNet, which includes banks, payment providers and other financial institutions.

Company information:

Logo (brand)
Company name	Ripple Labs
Founders	Arthur Britto, Chris Larsen, Ryan Fugger
CEO	Brad Garlinghouse
Years in operation	6 (since 2012)
Employees	300+
Engineers / developers	200+
Ripple offices	San Francisco, New York, London, Sydney, India, Singapore, Tokyo, Luxembourg and Dubai (9)
Investors*	Abstract Ventures, Accenture, AME Cloud Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, Avant Global, Blockchain Capital, Camp One Ventures, CME Ventures, Core Innovation Capital, CRCM Ventures, Digital Currency Group, FF Angel LLC, Google Ventures, IDG Capital Partners, Jesse Powell, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Nurzhas Makishev, Pantera Capital, Rosemoor Capital Management LLC, Route 66 Ventures, RRE Ventures, Santander Innoventures, SBI Investment, SCB Digital Ventures, Seagate Technology LLC, Standard Chartered Bank, Tim Kendall, Vast Ventures, Venture 51

* Ripple raised a total of $93.6M in funding from 29 VC investors:

 

What is RippleNet?

RippleNet is a global payments network which includes banks, payment providers and other financial institutions.

Number of clients	200 banks and financial institutions*
Notable clients	Standard Chartered, MUFG, Santander, PNC, CIMB, BDO, Bank of America, American Express Consortium of 61 Japan banks

* xCurrent, xRapid and xVia clients (as of October 2018)

 

XRP ledger

The XRP Ledger is a decentralized cryptographic ledger powered by a network of peer-to-peer servers. The XRP Ledger is the home of XRP, a digital asset designed to bridge the many different currencies in use worldwide. Ripple stewards the development of the XRP Ledger, and advances XRP as a key contribution to the Internet of Value: a world in which money moves the way information does today.

Since its inception there are 40+ million ledgers succesfully closed.

 

XRP - digital asset for payments

XRP is an independent digital asset native to the XRP Ledger (also called „ripples“, „zerps“). XRP offers banks and payment providers a reliable, on-demand option to source liquidity for cross-border payments. XRP's creators have developed it to be a desirable bridge currency that can facilitate trades in any other currency (fiat and cryptocurrency). Anyone with a cryptographic key and an internet connection can receive, hold, and send XRP to anyone else.

XRP is traded through the xRapid.

XRP info:

XRP Price
Ticker (symbol)	XRP
Logo
Max supply	100,000,000,000
Circulating supply	40,000,000,000
Algorithm	Consensus algorithm
Mineable	No

 

XRP Performance:

Settlement speed	4 seconds
Scalability	1,500 TPS On-ledger / 70,000 + TPS Off-ledger
Cost per transaction (fee)	$0.004 (0.000010 drops)

 

These are important features of a great XRP digital asset:

• speed
• transaction cost
• stability
• utility

XRP exchanges:
# of XRP / fiat pairs: 30+
# of exchanges: 100+
View here: http://www.stedas.hr/xrp-fiat-pairs.html

XRP Fees and transaction costs
To protect the XRP Ledger from being disrupted by spam and denial-of-service attacks, each transaction must destroy a small amount of XRP.

Current Transaction Cost
The current minimum transaction cost required by the network for a standard transaction is 0.00001 XRP (10 drops). It sometimes increases due to higher than usual load (1 XRP = 1,000,000 drops).

Other costs and fees:
Cost to activate a wallet (“reserve” amount): 20 XRP
Cost to add a trust line to a wallet: 5 XRP

What does XRP mean?

"X" is the standard currency prefix for non-national currencies, and RP stands for 'ripples' (in the early days it was the name for the ledger’s native asset).

Possible use cases

Other use cases for XRP include:

• Coil
• Omni
• SBProjectsTeam XRP Tip Bot
• Ripple for good

How to buy XRP (Ripple)?

You can buy XRP either with another cryptocurrency or with fiat currency:

1) first you need to buy BTC or ETH with credit / debit card and then exchange it for XRP. Some of the popular exchanges are: Binance, Coinfield, Coinbase and Bitstamp

or

2) buy XRP with Fiat currency i.e. USD, EUR, GBP, JPY on 100+ exchanges worldwide

XRP / FIAT PAIRS
You can buy XRP with 30+ fiat currencies on 100+ different exchanges around the world. View exchanges here: XRP / Fiat pairs

 

Ripple's software suit:
xRapid, xCurrent and xVia

Ripple offers 3 products to banks and payment providers:
1) xRapid
2) xCurrent
3) xVia

Ripple “converged” all three products in September 2018. Now, RippleNet clients
can use all three products at any time.

1) xRapid for on-demand liquidity

xRapid is for payment providers and other financial institutions who want to minimize liquidity costs while improving their customer experience.

Eliminate Pre-Funding in Destination Currencies
Cross-border payments often require banks, payment providers and others to hold pre-funded accounts in destination currencies, known as nostro accounts.

Opening and maintaining nostro
accounts across different countries is expensive, an inefficient use of cash and limits payment reach to strictly high-volume corridors (According to a 2016 McKinsey Global Payments report, there is approximately $5 trillion dollars sitting dormant in these accounts around the world – tying up capital that could be used in more productive ways; other sources estimate between $10 – 25 trillion dollars).

Because payments into emerging markets often require pre-funded local currency accounts around the world, liquidity costs are high. xRapid dramatically lowers the capital requirements for liquidity (40-60%).

xRapid converts the local currency into XRP at a digital asset exchange and sends it instantly across the XRP Ledger to the destination country. xRapid then converts XRP back into the local currency on the destination side and forwards the money to the beneficiary.

xRapid uniquely uses a digital asset, XRP, to offer on-demand liquidity, which dramatically lowers costs while enabling real-time payments in emerging markets.

2) xCurrent for processing payments

xCurrent is Ripple’s enterprise software solution that enables banks to instantly settle cross-border payments with end-to-end tracking.

Using xCurrent, banks message each other in real-time to confirm payment details prior to initiating the transaction and to confirm delivery once it settles.

xCurrent uses existing infrastructure to settle transactions.

3) xVia for sending payments

xVia is for corporates, payment providers and banks who want to send payments across various networks using a standard interface.

xVia's simple API requires no software installation and enables users to seamlessly send payments globally with transparency into the payment status and with rich information, like invoices, attached. xVia allows for financial institutions and businesses to easily send payments to and from emerging markets by leveraging the benefits of RippleNet — Ripple’s decentralized global payments network.

By providing a standard API solution, xVia lets companies that want to send payments — payment providers, digital wallets and other corporates — quickly scale their businesses, differentiate their services and address their customers’ unique needs. The individuals and businesses that rely on them can send payments faster and cheaper anywhere in the world.

Features:
- Multihop:

• xVia, Ripple's API Solution, works with xRapid or xCurrent
• Mulit-Hop enables smart routing for the cheapest payment path
• The most inexpensive paths have been xRapid paths

 

Xpring

Xpring (pronounced “spring”) supports businesses that want to build on the XRP Ledger. Some of the potential industries are:

• identity
• trade and finance
• gaming and virtual goods
• provenance
• real estate
• insurance
• digital media...

The initiative will invest, incubate, acquire and provide grants to companies and projects run by proven entrepreneurs that use the XRP Ledger and the digital asset XRP to solve their customers’ problems.

Currently, Ripple is evaluating more than 100 companies and projects for the Xpring  initiative.

Ripple provides the capital for Xpring and Xpring exists within Ripple. Xpring partners will operate as separate entities.

 

Coil

Coil uses an open API called Web Monetization in order to pay sites in real-time via Interledger protocol (ILP). Websites can securely provide rewards to any users who have Web Monetization enabled.

Whether you are a blogger, YouTuber or regular content creator you can now accept streaming payments in digital assets like XRP, BTC or ETH via Coil.

READ HOW-TO GUIDE: How to monetize your content (blog, website, YouTube etc.)?

 

Codius

Codius is an open hosting protocol. It makes it very easy to upload a program, whether you want it to run on one host or thousands.

Codius is:

• Interoperable with many different platforms and services through API connections
• Blockchain agnostic – it can execute transactions on and across any blockchain
• Easily ‘code-able’, with contracts that can be written using common languages such as C++, JavaScript, C#, Java and more (meaning millions of programmers can create code for it)
• Interoperable with any currency & payment ledger thanks to Interledger

What are the use cases of the Codius?

• Peer-to-peer Hosting
• Decentralized Apps
• Smart Contracts

It also has built-in billing. That means once a program is uploaded, anyone can pay to keep it running — the author, the users and even the program itself.

 

Cobalt

Cobalt is a new planned update to XRP Ledger consensus (upgrade). It is a consensus algorithm developed by Ethan MacBrough while he was working at Ripple.

Cobalt would result in a significant improvement on the current consensus algorithm used for validating transactions and would include greater through-put (transactions per second), and increased fault-tolerance.

Additionally, Cobalt will enable greater UNL diversity and satisfy a stronger theoretical security definition.

 

Inteledger protocol (ILP)

Interledger is an open protocol suite for sending payments across different ledgers i.e. digital wallets, national payment systems, blockchains and banks.

Like routers on the Internet, connectors route packets of money across independent payment networks. The open architecture and minimal protocol enable interoperability for any value transfer system.

Main functions of the ILP:

• Code With Money - add payments without being tied to a single currency or payment provider
• Multi-Hop Routing - send payments to other ledgers, even if they are multiple hops away
• Simple Protocol - inspired by TCP/IP, Interledger is easy to implement and use.

The infrastructure and application companies building with ILP:

• Coil
• StrataLabs
• Kava
• Mojaloop ( Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation)
• Ilp.ix, an mlab project
• XRP Tip Bot

Invented at Ripple, developed by the Interledger W3C Community Group - Interledger is not tied to any one company, blockchain, or currency. 

 

What is XRP Tip Bot?

XRP Tip Bot is one of the most popular applications in use by Tweeter users developed by Wietse Wind (a software developer from The Netherlands). XRP Tip Bot is multi-platform tip application which works for three major social media platforms: Twitter, Reddit and Discord.

XRP Tip Bot allows Twitter (or Reddit) users to send XRP (Ripple) to each other through Tweets (or comments). If you are feeling generous and want to send a tip to your friends, followers or anybody with a Twitter account you can now you use this incredibly useful, simple and fun tool.

But you can't go mad with tips. There are some limits you must be aware of:

1. Tipping amount limit: 5 XRP per tip
2. Withdrawal limit: 100 XRP / month

READ HOW-TO GUIDE: How to tip XRP (Ripple) on Twitter?

XRP Tip Bot app

You can download a new mobile version of XRP Tip Bot app:

1) Get the app on Google Play or Apple Store
2) Scan your QR code (see the QR code on the image below)
3) Send and receive XRP tips in real life!

* tipping limit is set to 20 XRP / tip

 

XRP Ledger Explorer

You can check your XRP transaction, address, TX hash or Ripple username:

1) XRP Charts

2) Bithomb

 

SWELL conference

Swell, hosted by Ripple, is an anuual conference that connects the world’s leading experts on policy, payments and technology for the most provocative dialogue in global payments today. Swell is located in San Francisco.

You can find more information about SWELL conference here: swell.ripple.com

 

Polysign

PolySign develops software solutions for institutional digital asset custody. PolySign was founded in 2017 by a team of experts in both financial services and cryptocurrencies - Jack McDonald (CEO), Arthur Britto (co-founder of Ripple) and David Schwartz (Ripple CTO).

PolySign’s objective is to become a leader in the growing digital assets space by providing institutional-level custodial and infrastructure support to a broad array of asset managers and exchanges.

More info: www.polysign.io

TOP 25 crypto related terms you need to know

Address (public key)	Every cryptocurrency wallet has a public "address" which is a string of numbers that acts like a bank account number e.g. rEb8TK3gBgk5auZkwc6sHnwrGVJH8DuaLh You can receive cryptocurrency directly to this address. It is important to remember that you need different address for each cryptocurrency like Ripple, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin etc.
Altcoin	Alternate cryptocurrency that is any cryptocurrency other than bitcoin i.e. Ripple (XRP), Ethereum (ETH), Litecoin (LTC)
AML	Anti-Money Laundering
ATH	All Time High (the highest price of the coin)
Bear/Bearish	Term used to denote that the market is going down (negative trend)
Blockchain	A blockchain is a massive decentralized and distributed public record (digital ledger) of all transactions executed throughout a computer network.
Bull/Bullish	Term used to denote that the market is going up (positive)
DLT	Distributed Ledger Technology
DYOR	Do Your Own Research
Exchange	An online place for trading cryptocurrencies (buy / sell)
Fiat	"Fiat" currency (traditional currency) is money that is not backed by a physical commodity i.e. gold or silver. Fiat currencies are EUR, USD, JPY, GBP, CAD...
FOMO	Fear Of Missing Out
FUD	Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt
HODL	Hold/Hold a position (Hold On for Dear Life)
KYC	Know your customer
Market Cap	Circulating supply x current price
Moon	Strong and continuous upward movement of price
P2P	Peer to Peer
PoC	Proof of Concept
PoS	Proof of Stake
PoW	Proof of Work
Private key	This is a secret password key which unlocks your wallet. Never share this, it is 100% full access to your cryptocurrency
Rekt	When you have a bad loss
Wallet	Refers to an account or location of storage for virtual currency. The wallet can be in physical form, online, or on a computer desktop. It also contains the private key needed to move or retrieve the owner's virtual currency
Weak Hand	Cryptocurrency holder prone to selling at the first sign of a deep in price
Whale	Individual or entity who owns a large amount of the cryptocurrency

 

SOURCES:

1. Ripple, www.ripple.com
2. XRPL Dev Portal, developers.ripple.com
3. Coil, www.coil.com
4. Inteledger, www.interledger.org
5. XRP Tip Bot, www.xrptipbot.com*
6. Xpring, www.xpring.co
7. SWIFT, www.swift.com
8. Wikipedia, www.wikipedia.org
9. Crunchbase: www.crunchbase.com
10. Codius, www.codius.org
11. XRP FUD debunked: www.fudbingo.com

*XRP Tip Bot is a bot that allows Reddit and Twitter users to send Ripple XRP to each other through reddit comments or Tweets. How to tip XRP on Twitter?