UpdatedWikiEntry_XRP

XRP is a cryptocurrency that was created by a small group of entrepreneurs in 2012.
Transaction Validation
Cryptocurrencies solve the double-spend problem by using a variety of methods of transaction validation.  Some use a system called ‘proof-of-work’ whereby competitive mining secures the network.  Others use ‘proof-of-stake’ whereby the accounts with a certain level of currency ownership handle the validation.  And others use a consensus model of transaction validation that relies on a voting by validating nodes.
XRP falls into this latter category, and it’s consensus model of transaction validation uses something called the “Ripple Protocol,” which uses voting among validators to verify transactions’ legitimacy and correctness.  This approach is deterministic as opposed to probabilistic.  This means that given a certain number of inputs, the XRP Ledger will conduct itself the same way each time given a certain validator composition.  This is not true in proof-of-work, since each miner of transactions, once they claim the right to create the next blog, has the ability to determine which transactions are included within the block.
The consensus model architecture used by the XRPL enables certain characteristics of XRP that are highly-desired; high throughput, reliability, and predictability are all enhanced with this approach.
History
Not much is mentioned about how the team of Arthur Britto, Jed McCaleb, and David Schwartz came together in the spring of 2011.  For more than a year, it was this small team that worked on the development of the XRP Ledger.  It was during this time that the team sought to innovate away from Bitcoin’s proof-of-work model and create something that was the opposite – a system that relied on consensus among members of the network rather than competitive mining.  This would eliminate the danger of a “51%” attack, along with the concept of mining.
In August of 2012, they were joined by Chris Larsen, who had previously participated in and led projects for E-Loan and Prosper.
It was after Chris Larsen joined the team that McCaleb and Larsen approached Ryan Fugger about joining their digital currency with his credit network.  Fugger agreed to support the new effort, and at some point this group of individuals decided to create a new digital currency on the network.  This currency would later be known as ‘XRP’.
This group of individuals then decided to gift a large amount of the currency to the company that they collaboratively founded, called OpenCoin.
The company went through two re-brandings; first to ‘Ripple Labs’ and then to just ‘Ripple’ when the team considered its products ready to support production usage.
Unique Characteristics
The network that uses XRP as a currency is known collectively as the “XRP Ledger” or “XRPL” for short.
Fees and Reserve Amounts
The XRPL uses the native currency – XRP – to protect the network against distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks.  The creators of XRP foresaw a need to protect the ledger’s performance against those that may ‘spam’ the ledger with millions of transactions, thereby slowing performance for legitimate network users.  To prevent this, they architected the XRPL to charge a small fee for each transaction.  The fee is not noticeable for a single transaction, but could easily rise to levels that would prevent network spamming if it is attempted.
Currently this minimum network fee is set to 10 one-millionths of one XRP.
In addition, a reserve amount was established so that it requires a user to invest some initial amount of money to open and use a wallet on the network.  Currently this ‘reserve fee’ is set to 20 XRP.
Code Governance
Too streamline code governance, each validator can vote on whether or not they approve a code amendment or not.  This process is also used for altering certain configurable portions of the XRPL, such as the minimum network fee, and the wallet reserve requirement.
Thus far, most of the code changes to the XRPL have been submitted by Ripple.
XRP Ownership and Distribution
Ripple owns a total of approximately  60.5 billion XRP.  Of this amount, a total of 55 billion was placed in a cryptographic vault known as an ‘escrow.’ In December of 2017.  Ripple is not able to access any XRP placed in escrow.
Each month, the escrow crypto-condition (time-date lock) releases one billion XRP to Ripple-controlled wallets.  At the end of the month, Ripple then placed any un-used portion of the one billion back into an escrow contract.
To date, roughly 39.2 billion XRP has been distributed to various stakeholders for private use. https://ripple.com/xrp/market-performance/
Further Information

https://xrpcharts.ripple.com/#/