Also, there was leaked lawyer letter where it says that Chris and Arthur (other co founders) wanted to return their XRP to company so they can be spread but Jed was against it and wanted Ripple Labs to pay him millions (at that time his stake was valued at some 100 million USD) instead of giving them to spread through community. That was probably the main reason why Jed left as he couldnt get millions right away.
From the letter:
Sadly, the vision Jed and I had for the project in the early days has been lost. I’m no longer confident in the management nor the company’s ability to recover from the founders’ perplexing allocation to themselves of 20% of the XRP, which I had recently would be returned. Prior to Jed's departure from Ripple, I had asked the founders to return their XRP to the company. Jed agreed but Chris declined
uh, it seems quite the opposite.
It quickly becomes a he said/she said game. David Schwartz seems to be the voice most trusted by the community, and made the
following statement:
This is David Schwartz, JoelKatz on the Bitcoin forums. I first became involved in what became Ripple Labs when Jed McCaleb hired me to investigate if a distributed agreement protocol could solve the double spend problem without a central authority. Jed and I met Jesse Powell at a burrito shop in Berkeley and convinced him to become the first investor.
Chris Larsen co-founded the company with Jed, taking on the operating role of CEO. With Chris at the helm, Ripple Labs has grown to a team of more than 50 people, pursuing a shared vision to make the Ripple protocol an open, decentralized, payment system by building utility and liquidity. Today, I'm Chief Cryptographer at Ripple Labs and a member of the Board of Directors.
We knew we would face a number of challenges, from the technical to the regulatory, but nobody could have expected the destructive behavior we've seen these past few days. Jesse's assertion that Chris was and is unwilling to give back his founders' stake to Ripple Labs is completely untrue. Arthur posted on the issue yesterday. I trust that the community has the judgment to see who is building and who is scorching the Earth.
I feel bad for Jesse in all of this. I think he ended up getting caught in the cross-fire, and possibly ended up being played by Jed. His timing of his resignation announcement was suspect, but understandable from the perspective that he wanted to prevent the exact scenario we are now in. Jed and Jesse had separate interests regarding the founder XRP, but seemed to unite for bargaining leverage against RL. I trust Jesse's words, so far as they fully represent the information he had available. Jesse also apparently helped line up the Fidor.de deal, which has been a major win. I trust in JoelKatz for having the most complete picture.
Multiple interests were involved, and little of the core conflict seems to have had anything to do with the community.
Jed's primary goal seems to have been a cash payout from Ripple Labs, as his girlfriend received. Jesse, meanwhile, seemed most concerned about the founder XRP not being distributed to investors---and preventing this exact scenario (Jed going nuclear). I understand his position, and it seems reasonable to me.
