Ripple CTO Advises Selling FLR Tokens, Raises Allegations

Ripple CTO David Schwartz voiced harsh criticism against the Flare Network in a series of tweets today. After more than two years following the snapshot for XRP holders, the project finally conducted its airdrop for the FLR token on Monday, January 9.

As NewsBTC reported, the FLR token already experienced a massive dump of more than 71% on Bitrue in the run-up to the airdrop, where the token could already be traded as IOU. After that, things didn’t get much better and FLR dropped even further, totaling a loss of 93% since Sunday, January 8. At press time, FLR was trading at $0.0437.

Thus, the FLR price is in no man’s land. The IOU on the token debuted back in January 2021 at Bitrue and started at a price of $0.0831. After that, the FLR token went up to $2.2472. At no point did FLR trade below its January 2021 debut price.

Ripple CTO Raises Harsh Allegations Against Flare Team

Via Twitter, Ripple’s chief technology officer wrote that the current rules for holding Flare for subsequent airdrops provide absolutely no incentive not to sell Flare now. “You lose *nothing* if you sell now,” Schwartz said.

He added that while it’s true that XRP holders miss out on subsequent airdrops, you don’t lose them. As the Ripple CTO explained, you can get 100% of their value if you sell your Flare, as the buyer can wrap the token and get the airdrops.

In general, Schwartz considers the distribution of the airdrop “a very strange decision.” For a long time, the project advertised that XRP holders would receive the full amount of FLR tokens right away.

However, the team did not keep its promise. They declared that with the first airdrop, only 15% of the total amount of 1.0073 FLR will be distributed for each XRP. The remaining 85% of FLR tokens will be airdropped in 36 monthly installments, with the method of distribution still dependent on a community vote.

Schwartz sees this as a breach of their commitment. “I want to be wrong, but I don’t see how,” the Ripple CTO said, following up with another serious allegation:

I feel bad saying this. I love the project and want the best for it and want to believe the best about it. But my honest opinion is that they leveraged the XRP community to grow and weakened their promises drastically when they felt they didn’t need it anymore.

While Schwartz qualified his statement in the following tweet when he wrote that this doesn’t mean they are “dishonest or that their project is bad,” he also said that XRP has evolved while the Flare Network team “failed to deliver on some promises” from the early days.

You can love Flare and love XRP too. It’s not one or the other. But I don’t have happy fuzzy feelings about how it went down.

Schwartz Advises To Sell The FLR Token (Later)

In response to a user’s follow-up question about whether it is now the best time to “take profits,” Schwartz replied:

I’m not saying people should sell. I’m just saying that they are acting irrationally if they don’t sell because they want the value of the remaining 85% of the airdrop. That’s just not rational.

Another user countered the argument by saying that FLR is already “worthless” after the massive crash, so owners of the token should rather wait. The Ripple CTO agreed, citing that “now is probably the worst time to sell. It would be kind of silly not to wait that out.”

Featured image from Forbes, Chart from TradingView.com