RIPPLE - XRP

Technology: DLT - Distributed Ledger Technology

Network: Consensus Protocol

Company: Ripple

Crypto: XRP

Total Supply: 100 Billion

Founders: Chris Larsen and Jed McCaleb

Transaction Cost: 0.00001 XRP

Target Market: Banks and Institutions

About: Ripple is an open-source and peer-to-peer decentralized platform that enables the seamless transfer of money and aims to be the bridge currency that enables cross-border payments.

While other cryptocurrencies aim to replace existing currencies, XRP is designed to act as a bridge to other currencies. XRP is decentralized and uses Gateway as the medium that serves as the link in the trust chain between two parties that need to make a transaction. Individual distributed validator nodes take a poll to determine the majority vote in order to form a consensus. Anyone can set up a validator node and even though there is no incentive for it, running one helps with the speed of the transactions on the network which are usually confirmed in about 5 seconds.

This consensus approach to confirming transactions means that XRP uses far less energy than Bitcoin and transactions are confirmed in seconds with very little cost.