David Schwartz vs. Justin Bons: The Epic Battle Over XRP Ledger’s “Centralization”

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The crypto world is buzzing as Justin Bons, the self-proclaimed oracle of decentralization, claims that Ripple’s XRP Ledger (XRPL) is about as decentralized as a corporate boardroom.

Meanwhile, David Schwartz, Ripple’s CTO Emeritus, is having none of it, defending the XRPL with the fervor of a knight protecting a dragon’s hoard. And so, a very important question is raised: what does it really mean for a blockchain to be “decentralized?” Ah, the million-dollar question.

Justin Bons Labels XRP Ledger “Centralized”

In a recent tweet (X, whatever that’s supposed to be), Bons went on the offensive, criticizing what he calls “centralized blockchains.” He pointed to XRP Ledger’s Unique Node List (UNL) as the villain of the piece.

“Ripple: Has a ‘Unique Node List’, which makes the validators effectively permissioned. Any divergence from this centrally published list would cause a fork, effectively giving the Ripple Foundation & company absolute power & control over the chain,” he declared.

Bons wasn’t stopping there. He also threw Stellar, Hedera, and Algorand under the bus, claiming that any blockchain with a permissioned element is basically the anti-Christ of crypto. He’s on a crusade, people.

“The future of finance is decentralized & permissionless,” Bons declared like a crypto prophet. “But let’s not pretend as if these chains are really playing a part in this revolution… Reject these permissioned chains & demand they decentralize.”

And to make things even more spicy, Bons outlined the only three “acceptable” forms of blockchain consensus: Proof of Stake (PoS), Proof of Work (PoW), and Proof of Authority (PoA). Anything else, apparently, is just “PoA” and, in his eyes, unworthy of the blockchain revolution.

David Schwartz Defends XRP Ledger

Of course, Bons’ post didn’t go unnoticed. David Schwartz, one of the very architects of the XRP Ledger, jumped into the fray, rejecting Bons’ claims like an expert dodging a bad punch at a bar fight.

Schwartz explained that the XRP Ledger was deliberately built so Ripple couldn’t simply wave a magic wand and control the entire network. He even made it clear that this decision was driven by, believe it or not, regulatory concerns. They thought ahead, people!

“Ripple, for example, has to honor US court orders. It cannot say no… But could a US court decide that international comity with an oppressive regime was more important than XRPL or Ripple? We were quite concerned that could come down either way. We absolutely and clearly decided that we DID NOT WANT control and that it would be to our own benefit to not have that control,” Schwartz explained like a wise old sage in a hoodie.

Schwartz wasn’t done, though. He rebutted Bons’ concerns about double-spending and censorship, explaining that validators can’t just force an honest node to accept fraudulent transactions. It’s like trying to get a cat to take a bath-good luck with that.

Each node, Schwartz explained, independently enforces protocol rules. If a validator goes rogue, the honest node simply ignores them. No big deal. If enough validators conspire to sabotage the network, that’s an honest majority attack, but even then, it doesn’t lead to double-spending. So, go ahead, try to break the system, but it won’t work.

“Transactions are discriminated against all the time in BTC. Transactions are maliciously re-ordered or censored all the time on ETH. Nothing like this has ever happened to an XRPL transaction and it’s hard to imagine how it could,” Schwartz smugly remarked, as if daring the critics to find fault.

In Schwartz’s view, XRPL solves the double-spend issue with its consensus rounds every five seconds, where validators vote on whether to include a transaction in the current ledger. It’s a beautiful thing. Honest nodes might even defer a valid transaction to the next round if most trusted validators didn’t see it in time. Consensus, without total control. Genius, right?

“There are only two reasons you need a UNL: 1) Otherwise a malicious party could create an unbounded number of validators causing nodes to do excessive work to reach consensus. 2) Otherwise a malicious party could create validators that didn’t participate in consensus, leaving nodes unable to tell whether they actually had reached consensus,” Schwartz explained, breaking it down like your favorite teacher who didn’t put you to sleep.

In conclusion, Schwartz said that Ripple couldn’t censor transactions or pull off double-spends, because using such powers would destroy trust in XRPL forever. So, really, the whole system is designed to prevent any single party from gaining too much control. Kind of like a democratic utopia-except with fewer speeches and more code.

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2026-02-25 08:25