History of Ripple: 10 Facts
AnalysisBit News Today2 min read
Ripple's origins trace back to 2004, when Ryan Fugger developed Ripplepay, a peer-to-peer payment network. In 2011, engineers David Schwartz, Jed McCaleb, and Arthur Britto began developing the XRP Ledger, aiming to build a more sustainable digital asset for payments that resolved Bitcoin's shortcomings, especially mining waste.
Key Milestones
After working to create a more sustainable system for sending value, and launching the XRP Ledger in June 2012, the group then created NewCoin in September 2012, joined by Chris Larsen as CEO. Early on, the native currency of the XRP Ledger, XRP, was pre-mined with 100 billion tokens, of which 80 billion were gifted to the company.
Unlike Bitcoin and Ethereum, the XRP Ledger relies on a unique consensus protocol called the Ripple Consensus Algorithm, validating transactions through independent validators who agree on transaction sets. Nodes validate transactions using a Unique Node List of trusted validators, proposing and adjusting transaction sets across consensus rounds until at least 80% agreement is achieved. This results in transactions that settle in just 3-5 seconds, with 1,500 transactions per second processed on the network.
McCaleb left the company in July 2013, followed by a rebranding from OpenCoin to Ripple Labs in September 2013. Brad Garlinghouse became CEO in December 2016, and in May 2017, Ripple placed 55 billion XRP into an escrow account. In 2014, the first bank began using the network to transfer funds, and in July 2023, a federal judge determined that XRP was not a security when sold to the public on digital asset exchanges. That decision dismissed key claims in an SEC lawsuit over unregistered securities, although in August 2024, the judge ordered a $125 million fine. The SEC's appeal of that ruling in January 2025 was eventually withdrawn, signaling the closure of the dispute.
Following the regulator's withdrawal, Ripple abandoned its cross-appeal, and both parties agreed to bear their own legal costs alongside a $125 million civil penalty. On September 24, 2020, the XRPL Foundation was established as an independent nonprofit organisation tasked with accelerating the development and adoption of the decentralized XRP Ledger.
