U.Today - Former director of developer relations at Ripple recently weighed in on the debate surrounding the true nature of decentralized finance (DeFi) projects. Hamilton responded to a member of the crypto space who claimed that XRP had nothing to do with decentralization and was simply a payment network.
In response to a crypto community member, Hamilton argued that XRP Ledger actually predates Ethereum and was created several years before the latter. He also shared the unbelievable fact that , the co-founder of Ethereum, used to sleep on the couch of David Schwartz, the CTO of Ripple, while trying to secure an internship with the company.
Decentralization issues
The debate on the true nature of decentralized finance was ignited by Cyber Capital founder and CIO Justin Bons, who claimed that Bitcoin, XRP, BNB and XLM are not genuine DeFi projects. On the contrary, Bons listed , Cardano and Polkadot as projects that really embody DeFi principles.However, XRP enthusiast Panos Mekras disagreed with Bons' assertion and claimed that XRPL, the blockchain that powers , had actually pioneered DeFi. Mekras argued that it was the first blockchain to support a decentralized exchange, tokenization of assets, stablecoins and smart contract features. He added that XRPL is also decentralized and permissionless.
Schwartz himself, whose couch was part of Vitalik Buterin's career ladder, previously participated in the discussion. He explained how the consensus on which operates provides real decentralization of the network, even better than proof-of-work blockchains like Bitcoin.