hoping 2018 will be year for Ethereum and we reach at 1st position
I'm sorry, but in 2018, I was more optimistic about the throne of Ripple. Ripple does not rely on block chains, but rather uses the nodes network formed by banks and financial institutions. Transactions are fast, safe and cheap, which is regarded as an excellent way to send money.
XRP is a long-term investment that will bring the maximum profit in a few years.
Ripple is an interesting asset to follow, yes. But I'm not sure it can be seen like all the others cryptoassets out there as it's not really decentralized.
So yes, you can make fast and cheap transactions but that's thanks to the few number of validators (55 if you trust
the last Ripple update on that matter) i.e. centralization of the ledger-keeping. Saying that Ripple is cool is like saying: "look, VISA is dealing with a huge load of transactions". Thus being said, the Ripple company seems to be commited to push decentralization forward but is moving really slow on that subject. And until there is around a few thousands active validators on the Ripple network, it cannot be seen as a decentralized ledger IMO.
For comparison, Ethereum is dealing with the same number of transactions daily than Ripple (roughly 800k-900k in the last few days) but with
more than 27k nodes that have to reach consensus. That's the real challenge here!
So for now, and also because ETH intend to offer much more than only settlement, I'll say go ETH!