Recently, Matt Hamilton, a former director of developer relations at Ripple, offered his opinion on the controversy surrounding the real purpose of decentralised finance (DeFi) initiatives. Hamilton reacted to a participant in the cryptocurrency community who insisted that XRP was just a payment network and had nothing to do with decentralisation.
Hamilton contended that XRP Ledger was really developed years before Ethereum in response to a member of the crypto community. Additionally, he revealed the unbelievable fact that David Schwartz, the CTO of Ripple, used to host Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum, while Buterin was applying for internships.
Decentralization issues
Justin Bons, the CEO and creator of Cyber Capital, sparked a discussion on the actual nature of decentralised finance by asserting that projects like Bitcoin, XRP, BNB, and XLM are not truly decentralised finance initiatives. In contrast, Bons identified Polkadot, Cardano, and Ethereum as projects that really uphold DeFi ideals.
Panos Mekras, an XRP supporter, disputed with Bons’ allegation and asserted that XRPL, the blockchain that runs XRP, was the one who invented DeFi. According to Mekras, this blockchain was the first to enable decentralised exchanges, asset tokenization, stablecoins, and smart contract capabilities. He continued by saying that XRPL is similarly permissionless and decentralised.
Vitalik Buterin’s career ladder included a sofa for Schwartz, who had previously taken part in the conversation. He described how, even better than proof-of-work blockchains like Bitcoin, the consensus on which the XRP Ledger runs offers true network decentralisation.
