Ripple CTO Affirms XRP Ledger's Full Decentralization Despite Community Criticism

As the CTO of Ripple has emphasized, the XRP Ledger is a fully decentralized network despite ongoing community skepticism. He clarified that the critical factor isn't the number of validators—currently only 187—but rather the distribution of these nodes among independent operators. According to his explanation, Ripple supports only one validator out of 35, representing less than 1% of the entire network. Major protocol changes require approval from at least 80% of participants, making unilateral transaction blocking or rule changes physically impossible.