Ripple was designed as a money transfer network meant to replace national payment systems, such as SWIFT. The first release of the Ripple network was held in 2012 and it was developed by Jed McCaleb, Arthur Britto, and David Schwartz. Ripple network itself is similar to a digital hawala service – it allows a money transfer to take place without actual money movement.
The network doesn’t run either with a Proof-of-Work or with a Proof-of-Stake system. However, it uses a consensus protocol to conduct transactions and validate accounts balances. XRP is a native cryptocurrency of the Ripple network. Its primary utility is paying fees for transactions within the network. The standard price to conduct the transaction is set to 0,00001 XRP, which means that transactions on the Ripple network are much cheaper than on the Bitcoin one or on most other blockchain networks. XRP is a so-called “pre-mined” cryptocurrency – 100 billion tokens were created at the network launch. Ripple owns about 6% of this to help the currency grow over time. And around 48% are held in reserve for regular release.
In April 2022. Ripple announced that a collection of NFTs dedicated to the life of a former NBA player, Michael Jordan, is coming to XRP Ledger in 2022. The collection will be done in partnership with Rare Air Media and VSA Partners.