Ripple Adds 4 Third-Party Validators to Decentralize the XRP Ledger

Ripple has added 4 third-party validators apart from its own as a way to make further progress on decentralization which has the Ripple community elated and hopeful of SEC’s stance on its decentralized nature.

Decentralization in progress?

According to the latest Validator Registry on the XRP charts, there is now 4 third-party validators apart from 14 of their own. These 4 third-party validators are BahnhofAB (Sweden), WorldLinkUS (US, Texas), Telindustelecom (Luxembourg), and FlagshipSG (US, Florida).

Ripple has been constantly in the limelight due to the questions put on its decentralized or lack of decentralization nature by the authorities and people in the crypto community.

Back in May, as a way to further decentralize the XRP ledger, Ripple released their plans for the same. Apparently, the company doesn’t want to rush into the decentralization as stated by them,

“Decentralization of XRP Ledger is a process that started right at its inception and has been ongoing since. We intentionally haven’t rushed the process and have been making continuous progress all along.”

They further talked about the solution which is “to diversify the validator ecosystem to further increase resiliency and robustness.” According to the team, this will also help XRP to become “globally adopted as the digital assets for payments”.

Ripple enthusiast rabbit took to Twitter to share his excitement for “decentralization is progressing”.

In addition to their 14 validators, #Ripple now recommends $XRP validator operators trust 4 validators they don’t run:@BahnhofAB (Sweden),@WorldLinkUS (US, Texas)@Telindustelecom (Luxembourg)@FlagshipSG (US, Florida)

I’m excited decentralization is progressing!

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— rabbit (@RabbitKickClub) July 1, 2018

Ripple enthusiasts hopeful

By diversifying the validators on XRP Ledger, the purpose has been to “maintain future network reliability and mitigate the risk of a single point of failure” so that it can run securely. Moreover, the performance of these validators is monitored against a certain criterion that includes public attestation, uptime, identity verification and consensus agreement rate.

Then the attested validators are added to Unique Node Lists (UNL) which are trusted nodes that validate transactions, modify fees and veto/enable amendments.

As the blog states, the aim is to become “more decentralized than Bitcoin”. Moreover, it further mentions that with just “16 trusted validators”, XRP Ledger will match Bitcoin.

This has the Ripple community elated with the progress as one Redditor, mikenard77 commented,

“…some may be validators that have been active for a year or more already. It’s about ripple adding them to their UNL. They added four in the last few weeks, and David has discussed in the past how they plan to do this very fast, instead of adding one or two over a long period. It’s already arguably that XRP is more decentralized than any other digital asset, those 13 would just be the “nail in the coffin” so to speak.”

Another Ripple user Dr. T commented on Twitter,

“Huge news. It means Ripple no longer has 80% of the validators in their own recommended Unique Node List meaning they can’t unilaterally pass any amendments without the help of a third party validator! We’re objectively gonna be more decentralized than BTC & ETH by EOY. BOOM.”

People are also hoping for a positive response from SEC now, as another enthusiast Michael B asked,

“correct me if I’m wrong… this further separates Ripple from #XRP in several ways and does this also widen the gap where the SEC is concerned… something more to hang their hat on so to speak.”

What are your views on Ripple making progress on adding third-party validators? Share your thoughts with us!