The XRP decentralization debate is heating up again, with Justin Bons, the founder of Cyber Capital, claiming that XRP advocates are duping retail investors ahead of a controversial XRP Ledger update.
“Selling XRP to retail as 'decentralized' is straight up fraud!” wrote Justin Bons in a recent X post.
The passionate cryptocurrency analyst cited the use of undocumented software code by the XRP Ledger in its recent development as an example showing major flaws in the network's governance and consensus system.
Bons believes the XRP Ledger has been operating on closed-source code for around two weeks now and that the change is expected to become mandatory as of Friday, Oct. 9.
XRP Ledger developers shipped an emergency software update on Sept. 25, version 3.4.1 for the XRP Ledger server software. It tackles security-sensitive problems and adds the fixBatchV1_2 amendment.
XRP Ledger developers confirmed that sensitive security fixes are currently not published in source code form, which they plan to release together with a technical retrospective.
Should the amendment remain adequately supported and be activated on Oct. 9, outdated software servers will be amendment-blocked and will be unable to stay in sync with the network.
Bons claims that keeping the source code undisclosed leads to unnecessary security concerns.
Is XRP really centralized？
Regarding the whole debate over centralization, the key point is the Unique Node List (UNL) model of the XRP Ledger.
As opposed to Bitcoin's Proof-of-Work system, the XRP Ledger depends on validators that individual network participants must trust. Ripple and the XRP Ledger Foundation publish lists of recommended validators that are used by default in the server configurations.
Anyone can run a validator for the XRP Ledger, but that doesn't necessarily mean they have any say in consensus. The other participants need to include them in their trusted list.
Technically, node operators may use any validators they wish, but XRP Ledger documentation warns that inadequate shared lists may lead to a node diverging from the rest of the network.
In the eyes of Bons, the existence of recommended validator lists gives their publishers too much power over the network.