Ripple

Ripple is a blockchain technology, which focuses on settlement and financial applications of the technology. It has been built from the ground up so that it can integrate easily with banks’ existing infrastructure, without much integration overhead.

 

Ripple’s distributed financial technology enables banks to send real-time international payments across networks.

 

– Ripple

Ripple is a private company, which has been developing this protocol for a few years now, and they have raised some substantial rounds of funding. They are also seeing good adoption in banks and financial institutions. The basic protocol is called Interledger Protocol (ILP), which enables banks to send payments across different ledgers and networks globally. They also have a cryptocurrency with the same name (XRP), which is the third largest regarding market capitalization, just behind Bitcoin and Ethereum.

There is also a concept of ILP validators in a Ripple network. The banks have an option of choosing their own centralized ILP validators or else relying on a network of ILP validators already present in the network which rely on a BFT consensus algorithm. While ILP validators provide a central truth and validate the transactions, they also maintain the privacy of the transactions. They just make sure that certain “crypto-conditions” are met. In this instance, whether the funds are available for transfer or not. You can find more information about ILP validators in this ILP white paper.