Ripple or XRP is a cryptocurrency owned by Ripple, or specifically in English, Ripple Labs. Ripple is often called the “crypto-banking project” due to Ripple’s many partnerships with big names in the financial industry, most notably banks. In short, Ripple aims to implement a solution based on “ledger” technology, which facilitates international settlements.

The XRP cryptocurrency is traded on Ripple’s distributed ledger. While this is secured by what the project calls a public of validators. Anyone can be a validator, but unlike node operators in other cryptocurrency projects, this activity is not financially rewarding. Therefore, validators are often institutions that want to ensure the security of the Ripple network, developers, or large investors.

In addition, to participate in securing the network, validators must be approved by their peers. Ripple also recommends trusting a unique list of nodes to verify the validity of its transactions. This is a list of carefully selected validators. Of course, in such a context, XRP cannot work with an energy-intensive algorithm like Proof of Work or mining, which Bitcoin uses.