David Schwartz, the chief technology officer at Ripple, has clarified that the XRP Ledger (XRPL) is a decentralized network, refuting claims made by Justin Bons, the founder of Cyber Capital, that the XRPL is not decentralized. Bons claimed that the XRPL is established on the concepts of permissioned nodes and does not depend on any popular decentralized blockchain consensus algorithms.

However, Schwartz noted that the XRPL possesses all the properties and features exhibited by other top decentralized consensus mechanisms such as PoW and PoS, and achieves consensus differently. He added that XRPL's model makes it extra cheap for users to use, making it a more decentralized network compared to PoW or PoS chains. Additionally, Schwartz noted that Ripple's ultimate aim of selling off its massive XRP holdings is to achieve broad distribution of the token.