David Schwartz, the Ripple CTO, recently debunked claims Ripple was looking to conceal its sales of XRP from the public, stressing they could easily do that on exchanges if they wanted.
Schwartz disclosed this while speaking on X amid discussions surrounding the state of the XRP Ledger. Notably, a community member blamed Ripple for allowing the XRP Ledger to metamorphose into an ecosystem with no financial or on-chain support for infrastructure providers.
These comments came on the back of plans from XPUNKS, an XRPL-based NFT project, to pivot to the Solana blockchain. The team behind the Onledger project supported the notion that Ripple takes the blame for the state of the network.
Allegations Surrounding Ripple
Onledger alleged that Ripple is the biggest threat to the XRPL, claiming the company would now be looking to cause more damage by concealing its sales of XRP with the proposed EVM sidechain.
For context, Ripple and Peersyst Technology partnered to launch an EVM sidechain for the XRP Ledger. RippleX has opened the XChainBridge amendment, seeking validator consensus on launching the XChainBridge to connect the EVM sidechain to the XRPL.
Onledger claims the firm is pushing for the launch of the EVM sidechain to wrap its XRP tokens and sell them off without a trace. It bears mentioning that Ripple has shown restraint with Hooks, which would introduce smart contracts functionality to the XRPL.
The XRP Ledger does not feature smart contracts despite being one of the oldest blockchains around. Interestingly, its rival Stellar welcomed smart contracts functionality last month. Onledger believes Ripple is against smart contracts because they wouldn’t be able to sell off their XRP blindly with the functionality.
Ripple CTO Responds
Responding to the claims, the Ripple CTO noted that if Ripple really wanted to hide its XRP sales, it would not have to go through such trouble. According to him, the payments company could easily choose to sell their XRP tokens on exchanges with less transparency instead of doing it on-chain.
In his words:
“Ripple can sell all the XRP we want on exchanges with less accountability than doing so on blockchains.”
Ripple can sell all the XRP we want on exchanges with less accountability than doing so on blockchains.
— David “JoelKatz” Schwartz (@JoelKatz) March 20, 2024
Onledger countered this theory, suggesting that the company would not be anonymous while selling their tokens on these crypto exchanges. However, Schwartz emphasized that while the exchanges would know they are involved in the sales, the public would not realize this.
The exchanges knows who we are but nobody else does.
— David “JoelKatz” Schwartz (@JoelKatz) March 20, 2024
Notably, Ripple’s sales have always been public knowledge, with on-chain data tracking most of its fund’s movements. In the past, the firm also provided data on its XRP sales every quarter.
However, some market participants claim Ripple’s sales, especially the ones to institutions involving bots, are part of the reasons behind XRP’s price suppression, a claim most industry commentators have vehemently debunked. The Ripple CTO also confirmed that the firm has already stopped these institutional sales.
