| People argue this all day. There's a lot of FUD. Ripple only runs ~7% of validator nodes; which is far less centralized control than major Bitcoin mining pools and businesses (who do the deciding in regards to the many Bitcoin hard forks); that's one form of decentralization. Ripple clients can use their own UNL or use the Ripple-approved UNL. Ripple is traded on a number of exchanges (though fewer than Bitcoin for certain); that's another form of decentralization. As an open standard, ILP will further reduce vendor lock in (and increase interoperability between) networks that choose to implement it. There are forks of Ripple (e.g. Stellar) just like there are forks of Bitcoin and Ethereum. From
https://ripple.com/insights/the-inherently-decentralized-nat... : > In contrast, the XRP Ledger requires 80 percent of validators on the entire network, over a two-week period, to continuously support a change before it is applied. Of the approximately 150 validators today, Ripple runs only 10. Unlike Bitcoin and Ethereum — where one miner could have 51 percent of the hashing power — each Ripple validator only has one vote in support of an exchange or ordering a transaction. How does your definition of 'decentralized' differ? |