Ripple (XRP) is a digital asset and payment protocol designed to enable fast, low-cost international money transfers. Unlike Bitcoin and Ethereum, XRP does not rely on mining; instead, it uses a unique Federated Consensus mechanism where a network of trusted validator nodes agrees on transaction order in 3–5 seconds.

The XRP Ledger

The XRP Ledger (XRPL) is an open-source, decentralized blockchain launched in June 2012 by David Schwartz, Jed McCaleb, and Arthur Britto. A total of 100 billion XRP was created at genesis — no new XRP can ever be minted. Ripple Labs received 80 billion XRP to fund operations and partnerships, with 55 billion placed in monthly time-release escrow accounts.

Each transaction on the XRPL burns a tiny amount of XRP (approximately 0.00001 XRP) as a spam-prevention mechanism. As adoption grows and more transactions occur, this deflationary burning gradually reduces the total supply.

The XRP Ledger settles transactions in 3–5 seconds at a cost of approximately $0.0002 — compared to Bitcoin's average of 10 minutes and $1–$5 per transaction.

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Ripple vs. XRP: What's the Difference?

Ripple refers to the company (Ripple Labs Inc.) that develops payment solutions built on the XRP Ledger, including RippleNet and On-Demand Liquidity (ODL). XRP is the native digital asset of the XRP Ledger — it operates independently of Ripple Labs on a permissionless blockchain. This distinction was central to Ripple's legal defense against the SEC, which argued XRP was an unregistered security. The case was largely resolved in Ripple's favor in August 2025.