Ripple was created back in 2012 as a purpose-built international payment protocol.

One of Bitcoin’s greatest strengths is the ability to conduct frictionless and truly global transactions. Ripple Labs took that and made it Ripple’s primary focus.

The Ripple network uses an innovative multi-currency liquidity pool – denominated in the native XRP token – to allow clients to convert significant sums of money from one currency to another instantly and with almost zero fees. The more valuable the XRP in the liquidity pool, the greater the value that can be transferred.

The transactions are verified by a global network of independent nodes using a system known as Proof-of-Correctness, which allows thousands of transactions per second with the same energy intensity as sending an email.

Ripple is a private company that was one of the first to design a blockchain that they owned and had control over. Rather than new XRP being issued over time, the entire 100 billion token supply was minted on day one and is being distributed over time by the company.

While this runs counter to crypto’s vision of decentralised networks with no real owners, private ownership allowed Ripple to develop their tech quickly and build an extensive corporate customer base. It has also led to repeated run-ins with America’s SEC over the question of whether XRP tokens were an illegal security.