Ripple's Chief Technology Officer, David Schwartz, has publicly defended the decentralized architecture of the XRP Ledger (XRPL), directly countering claims from critics like Justin Bons, founder of Cyber Capital, who labeled the network "centralized." The debate centers on the XRPL's use of a Unique Node List (UNL) for its consensus mechanism.
Schwartz took to social media to explain that the XRPL was intentionally designed so that Ripple, the company, could not control it. He stated that the system prevents Ripple from censoring transactions, reversing payments, or executing double spends, even under potential pressure from U.S. courts or regulators. "We absolutely and clearly decided that we DID NOT WANT control," Schwartz emphasized, framing the design as a practical measure to protect the network's credibility by making compliance with external orders technically impossible.
The discussion drew comparisons to Bitcoin and Ethereum. Schwartz argued that coordination challenges on the XRPL, such as resolving disagreements over validator lists, are no different from the coordination required for forks in other major networks. He pushed back against the notion that the UNL system grants Ripple "absolute power," explaining that each node independently enforces protocol rules based on its chosen UNL. If validators behave dishonestly, honest nodes can simply treat them as untrusted.
Justin Bons had criticized the XRPL's validator structure as effectively permissioned and antithetical to crypto's decentralized ethos, also naming Stellar (XLM), Hedera (HBAR), and Algorand (ALGO) in his critique. Schwartz countered by detailing the XRPL's consensus process, which involves validators voting in rounds roughly every five seconds to prevent double-spending, a mechanism he claims has never been compromised.
