Ex-Ripple Exec Shares Unbelievable Story About Vitalik Buterin and Ripple

Former director of developer relations at Ripple Matt Hamilton recently weighed in on the debate surrounding the true nature of decentralized finance (DeFi) projects. Hamilton responded to a member of the crypto space who claimed that XRP had nothing to do with decentralization and was simply a payment network.

In response to a crypto community member, Hamilton argued that XRP Ledger actually predates Ethereum and was created several years before the latter. He also shared the unbelievable fact that Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum, used to sleep on the couch of David Schwartz, the CTO of Ripple, while trying to secure an internship with the company.

You seem confused. The XRP Ledger was several years before Ethereum. Vitalik used to sleep on the CTO of Ripple’s couch whilst trying to get an internship there.

— Matt Hamilton (@HammerToe) April 30, 2023

Decentralization issues

The debate on the true nature of decentralized finance was ignited by Cyber Capital founder and CIO Justin Bons, who claimed that Bitcoin, XRP, BNB and XLM are not genuine DeFi projects. On the contrary, Bons listed Ethereum, Cardano and Polkadot as projects that really embody DeFi principles.

However, XRP enthusiast Panos Mekras disagreed with Bons’ assertion and claimed that XRPL, the blockchain that powers XRP, had actually pioneered DeFi. Mekras argued that it was the first blockchain to support a decentralized exchange, tokenization of assets, stablecoins and smart contract features. He added that XRPL is also decentralized and permissionless.

Schwartz himself, whose couch was part of Vitalik Buterin’s career ladder, previously participated in the discussion. He explained how the consensus on which XRP Ledger operates provides real decentralization of the network, even better than proof-of-work blockchains like Bitcoin.