The Reason Behind Ripple's XRPL Design: No Single Entity Has Complete Control

Ripple's Chief Technology Officer, David Schwartz, has refuted claims that the XRP Ledger (XRPL), was designed to give Ripple or any single entity control over the blockchain. Cyber Capital founder, Justin Bons, argued that Ripple's Unique Node List (UNL) gives the company "absolute power and control". Schwartz, however, labeled this claim as "nonsensical", stating that nodes individually choose which validators to trust and won't agree to censorship unless their operators explicitly choose to. Despite acknowledging that validators could conspire to halt the chain, Schwartz noted that they couldn't force double-spends, and in such a case, operators could switch to a different UNL. He further stated that XRPL was intentionally built to prevent Ripple from censoring transactions to comply with U.S. court orders.