Ripple’s XRP Ledger is all set to get new improvements and features in the upcoming updates scheduled ahead this week on Wednesday. These features will add additional support to the XRP protocol.
San Francisco-based blockchain startup Ripple Labs has released the announcement of two new versions for its XRP ledger. The announcement comes through Ripple’s commercial arm Xpring, as the new versions are aimed at improving its services. Besides, the XRP Ledger Devnet has developed these two versions 1.5.0 and 1.6.0-b1, with sponsorship from Xpring.
Updates for Ripple’s XRP Ledger
The XRP Ledger 1.5.0 brings improvements like support for the gRPC API, new RPC methods, API versioning, better handshaking protocol, improved delivery method, improved packet building, and many other bug fixes.
The XRP Ledger version 1.5.0 shall be deployed on the XRP Ledger Testnet by Wednesday, April 15. the announcement reads that this version will “give developers an environment for testing their applications with faux XRP that mirrors the latest stable version running on XRP Ledger Mainnet”.
On Wednesday, Ripple’s Xpring team will also be updating its XRP Ledger mainnet servers. Reportedly, after the update, Xpring will also vote to approve new features to the XRP Ledger decentralized features.
Morgan Creek Manager Raises Concerns on Ripple’s Centralized Nature
Talks about Ripple’s centralized nature are not new to the crypto world. With Ripple holding a major of the XRP tokens several analysts in the past have raised doubts over XRP decentralization. Morgan Creek Capital Management founder and CEO Mark Yusko spoke about XRP’s inclusion in the company’s cryptocurrency index firm.
In his recent interview with Thinking Crypto, talking about the Bitcoin era, Yusko said that the relationship between Ripple and XRP is the major reason for its exclusion from the crypto index. He said:
“I still struggle with the XRP-Ripple structure – or how cash flows are created or shared. But that’s a topic for another day. Yes, there is a point at which, if they had enough distribution of XRP, it could qualify for the index.”
Morgan Creek’s Crypto Index Fund is the S&P 500 equivalent of the cryptocurrency market. It gives its investors and clients the exposure to top 10 cryptocurrencies by market cap excluding XRP. The fund also includes Stellar since the Stellar Foundation itself holds 30 million XLM tokens. “We exclude anything … that’s too closely held. So we don’t own Stellar and we don’t own XRP,” explained Yusko.
Ripple’s RippleNet Payments Service Now Available in Thailand
Thailand’s oldest bank – Siam Commercial Bank (SCM) has partnered with digital money transfer service Azimo to facilitate instant cross-border payments service from Europe to Thailand using RippleNet, Ripple’s global payment network.
In the announcement last week, Ripple said that the solution will help the two parties to overcome the challenges of unreliable and expensive global payments. Azimo said that by using RippleNet is can convert Pounds/Euros to Thailand’s Baht in less than a minute.
“Thailand recently launched its instant payment network, and this partnership with the largest bank in the country allows us to get the time to settle payments down from around 24 hours to an average of 22 seconds. [It’s] faster to send money to Thailand than to someone else in Europe,” said Michael Kent, Azimo’s co-founder and executive chairman.
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