Maybe. But everything depends on mainstream adoption for XRP to succeed. If people continue to use Ethereum on top of XRP or any other smart contract platform, then the world's third-largest cryptocurrency by market cap won't make the difference. Still though, businesses and companies would find the XRP Ledger to be quite attractive for smart contracts. It's no secret that XRP is faster and cheaper than Bitcoin or Ethereum. Mainstream businesses and companies could leverage XRP's smart contracts feature in order to launch highly-performing tokens across the crypto market. I believe that STOs, ICOs, and even IEOs would be much more successful by using a scalable distributed ledger that focuses on speed and low costs than anything else. The only downside would be the risk of centralization. But a system like this is perfect for the regulated banking industry and the businesses world.
We'll see what will happen with XRP once it adopts the "Flare Network" for smart contracts. It might become a viable competitor against Stellar and Ethereum if this new feature becomes a success.
And one thing, there is no absolute decentralization in this world. Even Bitcoin is going the path of centralized crypto through 3rd party company or authority if ever regulation is implemented.
Exactly. Unfortunately, that's the path crypto is heading to. The mere fact that the industry is dependent on centralized exchanges and services to succeed has a lot to say about it. People don't care about decentralization as long as they're able to send/receive money (and make profit along the way) in the most convenient way possible. The XRP Ledger, although much more centralized than leading cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin or Ethereum, could gain a lot of prominence within the mainstream world due to its fast settlement speed and low fees. This combined with smart contract functionality, could open up a whole new world of possibilities. XRP could challenge Ethereum in crypto land, if businesses and companies start to adopt it at a large scale. With the many bank partnerships the Ripple company has obtained over time, its XRP distributed ledger could become widely adopted worldwide.
Nonetheless, I believe that the XRP Ledger could ramp up the competition within the smart contracts space with Ripple's acquisition of the "Flare Network". Ethereum, Cardano, EOS, and other smart contract platforms will battle alongside XRP for supremacy within the Blockchain industry. While Ethereum is still the leader of smart contracts (decentralized applications), this could be subject to change in the future. Maybe XRP will prevail, or none will be able to outmatch ETH within the crypto space? It'll be interesting to see how everything unfolds with XRP entering the game of smart contracts. Just my thoughts