According to Whale Alert, around 12 hours ago, Ripple shoveled a whopping 100 million XRP in a single transfer to a wallet that the crypto tracker tagged as “anonymous”. This happened after the company withdrew an astounding billion XRP tokens from escrow two days earlier.
Ripple Shovels 100 Million XRP to Unknown Wallet After Selling 30 Million One Day Earlier
In the meantime, whales have shifted close to 300 million XRP over the past two days. These were another two days of whales moving massive amounts of Ripple-affiliate tokens as their activity has increased over the past month. A transaction made by Ripple was spotted among them too.
Whale Alert tweeted that 100 million XRP left Ripple’s wallet, going to an “unknown” address. However, Bithomp on-chain wallet tracker focused on XRP shows that this chunk of crypto went to RL18-VN – an address frequently used by Ripple to move funds beyond the company. From this wallet, in the past, crypto was sent to exchanges, institutional customers, and charity.
🚨 🚨 🚨 100,000,000 #XRP (33,098,056 USD) transferred from Ripple to unknown wallethttps://t.co/Bt9oK9r21W
— Whale Alert (@whale_alert) September 2, 2022
On September 1, it released one billion XRP from escrow on a regular basis. This time, however, 700 million tokens were locked back in escrow on the same day and 300 million were set aside to be injected into the circulating supply later on. The above-mentioned 100 million XRP is likely to be part of that unlocked crypto.
Aside from the news about Ripple’s transactions, Whale Alert also spotted several large transfers that carried approximately 290 million XRP. Large amounts of XRP were shifted from the Bittrex exchange to Mexico-based Bitso and Bitstamp exchanges – 60,000,000 and 50,000,000 XRP.
Bitso also wired 101.8 million XRP between its internal addresses. This exchange runs one of Ripple’s liquidity corridors based on the ODL (On-Demand Liquidity) tech, therefore it often conducts operations with XRP, selling it, sending it to other exchanges, or internally. As for Ripple itself, it wired 30,000,000 XRP tokens to the Bitstamp exchange, which is also one of its ODL platforms. The transfer was conducted via the aforementioned RL18-VN wallet.
XRP/USD 4-hour chart | Source: TradingView
Over the past three months, the 7-ranked token XRP has been trading in the $0.3 range. In mid-June, XRP plunged from the $0.40 area and traded in the $0.32 range for a couple of months. At the end of July, it managed to briefly recover $0.4032 but after that went back to the $0.38-0.36 range again. Since August 19, the coin has been moving trading at the $0.34-$0.33 zone. Ripple continues its legal battle against the SEC, which, as many in the XRP army believe, is the greatest factor that is keeping the token’s price down.
Is XRPL Really Decentralized?
The default Unique Node List (dUNL) is the most widespread list of XRP Ledger nodes. It is leveraged by the majority of validators; however, there are two centralized entities behind the dUNL. Isn’t this a contradiction?
Jake has taken to Twitter to share a thread about the default Unique Node List (dUNL) for XRP Ledger nodes and its role in the network’s architecture.
Firstly, there are multiple UNLs and each UNL is a unique list of validators entrusted to be a source of consensus. Each validator has its own UNL that it trusts to act as its source of reliable & trustworthy consensus. (2/9)
— Wo Jake (@woj4ke) September 2, 2022
As he stressed, in XRP Ledger, every validator has its own Unique Node List. Three widely known UNLs are those of Ripple, XRP Ledger Foundation (XRPLF), and Coil. As of Q4, 2022, the default Unique Node List (dUNL) now consists of Ripple’s and XRPLF’s UNLs. But every validator can either use the dUNL or create a new UNL anytime.
Meanwhile, validators prefer to listen to the dUNL as it is a reliable source of consensus maintained by secure and trustworthy entities with a long-running history of XRPL support.
Also, the dUNL is included in default presets available after rippled software installation. This does not affect the actual level of decentralization for XRPL transactions: “The XRPL’s consensus protocol is decentralized *by design*. Bitcoin is decentralized *by design*.”
The same goes for Ethereum. Here is why the critics of XRPL decentralization should not address its aspects connected with technical design. Like with every mainstream blockchain protocol, XRPL’s technical decentralization has nothing to do with the “political situation” around the network. Previously, RippleX engineers recently revealed a new proposal for a sidechain design to advance the scalability and functionality of the XRP Ledger network.
Read more:
- Witness’s Function Is Expected To Help Enormously With The XRP Ledger Side Chain In The Lawsuit With SEC
- XRPL Sidechains Are Set To Undergo Major Design Change Under New Proposal