By
Godfrey Benjamin
April 24th, 2024
Checks is one of the amendments on the XRP Ledger Protocol that have been around for long but is yet to achieve a majority vote to become functional on the Ripple network.
Since its launch in 2018, Ripple‘s Xpring initiative has invested over $500 million in different projects. Reporters and analysts who tracked Xpring’s investments discovered that it has contributed to more than 27 projects since its inception. Some of the notable projects include Dharma, Compound, Securitize, Forte, and Bitso. In 2019, Forte received an investment of $100 million from Xpring. Forte is a blockchain-powered gaming platform that leverages Xpring’s open-source Interledger Protocol with XRP. It serves as a base pair settlement. A majority of the Xpring investments are linked to Ripple’s core business model. Reporters noted that Xpring’s business model revolves around XRP and payments development. XRP ecosystem is quickly expanding and a new Checks feature may appear soon.
Xpring made more than 18 investments in 2019. But, the initiative has remained conspicuously quiet in 2020. So far this year, it has two investments that include NEAR Protocol and Coinme. NEAR is a blockchain platform for decentralized applications, while Coinme is a crypto ATM provider.
XRP Ledger (XRPL) and XRP Checks Feature
Recent reports indicate that the XRP ledger (XRPL) is continuously in development. New versions are developed or added to solve various issues or implement new features. As new features are added and amendments made, they are released for voting among validators on the network. The amendments are only activated if an 80% majority vote for two consecutive weeks.
Most of these features have been introduced on XRPL in this manner in the past. The notable features include Escrow, which is a feature that Ripple has used to lock up 55 billion XRP with monthly releases. Another feature that was introduced in that strategy is DeletableAccounts that enables users to delete accounts.
Checks is one of these amendments that have been around for long but is yet to achieve a majority vote. It was introduced with the 0.9.0 release back in February 2018. Checks were introduced as a UNL got rid of a veto and got just a vote less than the needed majority. But now, it might see the light of day soon.
The Checks amendment works similarly to the paper checks. It functions with both XRP and all the other currencies issued on the XRPL. It serves users of the network, enabling them to exchange funds asynchronously. This process is familiar to and accepted by the financial industry.
Accounts can choose to strictly reject any incoming funds from all transactions sent by unauthorized accounts. But, they can use Checks as an easy way to accept payments and decide to claim or reject at their discretion. That strategy can assist in compliance where an entity must know the source of the funds received.