#Ripple was conceived in 2004 by Ryan Fugger, a web developer from Vancouver, as a decentralized digital monetary system.

It was initially named RipplePay. Ryan Fugger's idea was to allow individuals and communities to easily develop their own virtual currency.

The RipplePay system was launched in 2005, still with the idea of offering secure payments worldwide.

In 2012, Jed McCaleb, from the eDonkey network, and Chris Larsen, founder of E-Loan and Prosper, approached Ryan Fugger to present their idea for a new digital currency.

This currency was based on a consensus verification system among members of the same network, rather than mining, like Bitcoin. Ryan Fugger then handed over the reins of RipplePay to them. McCaleb and Larsen renamed the company OpenCoin.

The objective of the Ripple project

Their goal is clear: to provide payment solutions for banks and financial institutions. They then developed a new payment protocol, based on the concepts created by Fugger. They named it Ripple Transaction Protocol (RTXP).

As early as 2012, inspired by the creation of Bitcoin, the leaders of Ripple deployed their own blockchain to provide exchange services across multiple currency pairs and also to store all accounting information of the network participants. The native cryptocurrency of this blockchain, XRP, was created at the same time.

In 2013, OpenCoin changed its name to Ripple Labs. The company launched numerous projects, some of which have since been discontinued. Ripple Labs, for example, proposed Codius in 2014, which aimed to develop smart contracts. It was not until 2015 that the company took the name Ripple.