Ripple, the enterprise blockchain solution for global payments, submitted two white papers for peer review today as it looks at improving the long-term health and stability of the XRP ledger.
The San Francisco-based startup submitted its first paper, Analysis of the XRP Ledger Consensus Protocol, which builds on its previous algorithm analysis from 2014. Essentially, it proves that the ledger ensures safety – no forks will take place – and liveness – the network won’t stall with unprocessed transactions.
The second paper, Cobalt: BFT Governance in Open Networks, introduces Cobalt, an ‘algorithm that works in networks with non-uniform trust and no global agreement on participants.’ As a consensus algorithm it aims to improve the existing XRP Ledger Consensus Protocol by permitting the flexibility to create more diverse Unique Node Lists (UNLs).
According to the paper, with increasing popularity in decentralised digital currencies, it is becoming important to have algorithms that are ‘fast, efficient, easy to run, and quantifiably safe.’
The paper adds:
“The exact properties that Cobalt satisfies makes it particularly applicable to designing an efficient decentralized “voting network” that allows a public, open-entry group of nodes to agree on changes to some shared set of rules in a fair and consistent manner while tolerating some trusted nodes and arbitrarily many untrusted nodes behaving maliciously.”
The news of Ripple’s paper submissions comes amid reports that it has extended its reach into emerging markets with the addition of five new customers.
Two banks – Itaú Unibanco from Brazil & IndusInd from India – in addition to money remittance providers InstaReM from Singapore, Beetech from Brazil, and Zip Remit from Canada are joining RippleNet to aid payments both into and out of emerging, global markets, according to a press release.
Itaú Unibanco, IndusInd, and InstaReM are planning to use Ripple’s enterprise-ready ledger product xCurrent to facilitate real-time and cross-border transactions, while Beetech and Zip Remit will use Ripple’s xVia API to conduct payment corridors for their customers around the world, reports Finextra.
Patrick Griffin, head of business development at Ripple, said that blockchain solutions can deliver a significant impact to emerging markets, adding:
“Whether it’s a teacher in the U.S. sending money home to his family in Brazil or a small business owner in India trying to move money to open up a second store in another country, it’s imperative that we connect the world’s financial institutions into a payments system that works for their customers, not against them.”
