The Ripple XRP Crypto Currency has been around since 2013 where it started life as Opencoin
So, what on earth is XRP?
and how does it work?
Well, let's start with a (Hopefully) simple explanation of what is a "Cryptographic Hash", try to follow..
Computers are rarely prone to errors however to be sure various error checking mechanisms evolved to protect data and guarantee integrity in varying strengths
Imagine you have a block of data and you want to make sure there is no corruption, a simple way to do this is to add up all of the data and the result is called a checksum, later when you want to make sure that nothing has changed you simply add up all the data again and check it against the Checksum, if it matches you can be pretty sure that the data is good, but what about the Checksum? what if that is the bad part and what about the strength of this method?
So a lot of computer engineers and mathematicians thought about this over many years and came up with stronger and stronger methods to protect Data and we arrived at the complex world of modern Hashing. a Hash is basically a really strong and secure checksum that takes a LOT of computing power to crack it (Like it can take computers till the end of the universe to crack it strong)
So now you now know the basics of a Hash what is a Blockchain?
Take a block of Data, and in the blockchain world the first block is called the Genesis Block,
take a Cryptographic Hash of this data (Like we did above) and include this Hash into the data of block number 2. Then take a hash of block number 2 and include this data into block number 3, now this can go on and on and on and if any data is changed at any point all the way down the line (for miles and miles) you will detect the corruption.
You now have a beautiful long train of data of strong integrity, The blocks being like carriages can hold Data and even things like Account Balances
In Cryptocurrency this data can contain a Ledger of who owns what and who traded what with who, so what we do next is Share this blockchain out to the world, and if you know the Starting Hash (and everybody who participates knows it) you can verify that you hold a good copy of the train, in fact you only need to hold a copy of the last few carriages, you can then send a message down the line and ask to confirm you are on the right train, and be really really sure you are on the right train, so holding your Carriages you can then interact with others and it just so happens a blockchain is really good at storing Value.
So if you get all that, you basically know how Bitcoin works, however just to enlighten you more I want to tell you what cryptocurrency "Mining" is. No doubt you have herd of Bitcoin Mining and are really confused. but its not so bad.
Bitcoin, Litecoin, Etherium are what is known as Proof of Work coins, they are Mineable Coins, where to prove ownership of the coins computer engineers came up with a tricky little way of discovering ownership involving a "nOnce" What this involves is computing hashes (as you learnt above) over and over each time incrementing the nOnce until you get acceptably close to solving the hash, remembering that you may never ever solve the hash, it has to do with the number of leading zeros on the hash that is found (in binary) and when you discover a hash that by random chance has a number of zeros that match or better the current "Block Difficulty" you then Broadcast your solution to the network and other mining computers check your answer and if you get at least 3 or more confirmations from the network you have solved the Puzzle and can claim the "Block Reward" of coin and the entire network then moves on to solving the next block. Rolling the nOnce is a matter of checking it, incrementing it, and checking again, being a finite number everybody can run out of nOnce, to get around that little problem the Block also includes the current Unix Timestamp, and as you know time can take forever, so when the nOnce ticks over a new timestamp is included in the block and the Mining can go on an on until the block is solved
it's basically a whole lot of Noncense
involving micro super computers called ASICS that eat up a terrible amount of Electricity that is scaling out of control, wasting energy into oblivion and currently there is a lot of money tied up in it all so what happened is smart people came up with better solutions
XRP is a Second Generation Cryptocurrency
XRP is known as a Distributed Ledger Cryptocurrency, and it has all the wonderful benefits and strengths of Bitcoin minus the Mining, it is a Pre-Mined Coin that uses a "Proof of Ownership" algorithm rather than a Proof or Work, and without the Mining Component it can operate lightning fast and where Bitcoin inherently has a lot of issues in using small fractions of Bitcoin in transactions and can take hours and hours to transact XRP has no issues with this.. instead of Miners the backbone of Ripple is a network of Validators. and anybody can create and run your own Validator. it is open Source Software, But leave that to the Geeks because even though you can create your own Validator you don't have to, because there are Universities and Companies and even Government Departments growing this network for you.
The team behind XRP is www.ripple.com,
Ripple Engineers improved and re-branded Opencoin, came up with Ripplecoin, and being a corporation set out to work with the Government and Banking regulators from day one.
Currently XRP is the only Cryptocurrency that is US Government FINCEN Approved this basically means it complies with Anti Money Laundering laws.
Where did Ripplecoin go?
Ripple was re-branded XRP (X Ripple) in order to distance Ripple the company from XRP. as XRP is a Publicly Distributed Coin Ripple themselves are no longer able to shut XRP down in fact they remain about 17 Percent in control of XRP via the Validators, Companies like Microsoft, Universities like MIT, Kyoto University, now contribute to Ripplenet
XRP is in the midst of being re-branded ODL
"On Demand Liquidity"
The Following is a series of Video's that you should watch if you are new to XRP that contain some important information
This first video is old its from May 2018 and became quite famous in the XRP Community, it contains remarkable information from Suzie of https://esoterictradingsolutions.com.au/
Try to watch it
