Ripple submits two upgrade proposals to crypto community

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The world’s third most valuable cryptocurrency is looking to move up a notch or two. Ripple hopes to achieve this by improving the technology behind its platform, and published two white papers to the community outlining the proposed network improvements. By publishing the papers, Ripple developers hope to receive peer input on what operational impact, if any, the changes would cause.

The first white paper, “Analysis of the XRP Ledger Consensus Protocol,” is a step up from the company’s 2014 paper on the subject, and provides mathematical proof that the network will operate as it should. The paper focuses on two topics, safety and liveness. In terms of safety, developers want to reassure the community that Ripple won’t suffer a fork like what was seen with legacy Bitcoin (BTC). Liveness revolves around the coin’s ability to keep processing transactions in years to come.

The second paper deals with platform improvements. Titled “Cobalt: BFT Governance in Open Networks,” the paper demonstrates improvements on previous Ripple plans through an algorithm that offers a wider amount of validators. Ripple Chief Technology Officer Stefan Thomas pointed out that the papers are theoretical and are meant to demonstrate a long-term impact, not a short-term solution.

“It’s not going to affect how users use XRP right now. They won’t experience any downtime or anything,” he said.

Thomas indicated that the white papers show progress towards the development of a closer working relationship between Ripple’s research department and the academic community. The crypto company hopes that researchers will be able to follow more closely as the company continues to roll out new developments.  Thomas noted that Ripple is also in the process of adding a layer of defense against cyber-attacks. While these attacks are highly unlikely in Thomas’s estimation, he wants users to know that Ripple offers the greatest amount of security for the platform.

Ripple developers hope to increase the digital currency’s $40-billion value by concentrating diligently on its infrastructure. It has the backing of several large international banks, such as Santander and SBI, and has recently been the target of criticism for allowing its development to lag compared to coins like Bitcoin and Ethereum.  The jury’s still out though, and it will take some time to determine if the solutions pay off.

Note: Tokens in the SegWit chain are referred to as SegWit1X (BTC) and SegWit Gold (SWG) and are no longer Bitcoin. Bitcoin Cash (BCH) is the only true  Bitcoin as intended by the original Satoshi white paper.  Bitcoin BCH is the only public block chain that offers safe and cheap microtransactions.