Did you see this? At the Sydney XRP event, Garlinghouse pulled up memories from 2018. Do you remember Snoop Dogg appearing as a special guest back then? It was during the New York Blockchain Week, and it seemed to be run with a vibe similar to a Snoop Dogg Australia tour. Just how impactful that event was—people can still recall it today. This upcoming Australia Sydney 2026 event was apparently quite big. Ripple’s main figures, like Monica Long and CTO David Schwartz, were all there, and it was hosted by Wave of Innovation. If it was enough for memories like a large-scale event such as Snoop Dogg Australia to come up, doesn’t that mean the community has really grown? What Garlinghouse emphasized was the ongoing development of the ecosystem and the growth of the community. He had a pretty optimistic tone about XRP’s future. With this, it really feels like Ripple still has momentum—what do you think?

I noticed an interesting movement in XRP derivatives — trading volumes on one of the major derivative platforms surged by 1185% in a single day to $17 million. Usually, such a spike in activity indicates that traders are preparing for significant price fluctuations. But here’s the paradox — the price of XRP itself fell by 2.14% to $1.45. It seems to be a typical end-of-week scenario: the dollar is strengthening, crypto is under pressure, and everyone is worried about the US labor market data. Plus, talks about possible Federal Reserve rate cuts next year add to the uncertainty. Meanwhile, XRP still increased by 5.22% over the week — not too bad. And here’s the interesting part: institutional clients now have the opportunity to trade XRP futures on a regulated US market. This could change the game for large players in derivatives trading.

An interesting debate has erupted around the decentralization of XRPL. Justin Bons from Cyber Capital criticized, claiming that the XRP Ledger is controlled by Ripple and does not meet decentralization standards. His main argument focused on the UNL mechanism — he insisted that it gives Ripple excessive influence over the network’s consensus. David Schwartz, who has long led technical development at Ripple, decided to respond to these accusations. His position is quite clear: decentralization is not what characterizes XRPL. According to him, the network operates through distributed validators, and consensus is achieved without a single corporate authority. What’s interesting is that Schwartz emphasized a fundamental difference from Bitcoin. Bitcoin uses proof-of-work, while XRPL nodes independently verify each transaction. This is a fundamentally different approach. Additionally, decentralization is a problem that XRPL supposedly solves better than competitors — the network does not reorder transactions to favor miners, as in Bitcoin or Ethereum. Schwartz also touched on censorship. The architecture of XRPL prevents double-spending and protects against malicious censorship. In his view, this strengthens the truly decentralized nature of the network. Whether these arguments are convincing is up to each individual, but the position is clear: decentralization is an accusation that, as Schwartz believes, simply does not apply to XRPL in the way it is criticized.