Quite often now, a new cryptocurrency project comes onto the scene and immediately gets declared as a game changer. The trend has been so since Bitcoin (BTC) brought blockchain technology to the world’s attention.
And as the revolution continues to snake towards global acceptance, successive cryptocurrency solutions combine innovativeness and ingenuity to bring us some of the truly disruptive solutions. Litecoin (LTC) was created to complement Bitcoin’s payment solution while Ethereum (ETH) brought us smart contracts. Later, Ripple (XRP) came onto the scene, seeking to transform financial transactions, specifically the cross-border settlements.
Ripple (XRP) has been touted as the best solution to the global problem of sluggish and abhorrently costly cross-border money transfer. Its journey towards achieving that is gathering incredible speed, with more and more banking institutions warming up to its products.
But now, there is XinFin (XDCE), the latest cryptocurrency solution. Its hybrid blockchain architecture combines the best of private and public blockchain technology, seeking to streamline global trade and finance. In many ways, it can be compared to Ripple (XRP).
How does XinFin’s XDCE compare to Ripple (XRP)?XinFin is run by the XinFin Foundation, a non-profit organization, while Ripple (XRP) is owned by Ripple, a private San Francisco based start-up company.
XinFin and Ripple are both highly scalable and permissioned platforms that provide a platform for safe, private transactions across networks. The ability to interoperate different networks sets the two networks apart from the top coins. The lack of interoperability means that Bitcoin and Ethereum, for instance, can’t allow cross-network transactions. XDC and XRP provide that solution, making them ideal for institutions like banks and trading platforms that deal with multiples of currencies.
The native currencyThe XDCE and XRP currencies on XinFin and Ripple platforms share a lot of similarities. They are premined and have a limited supply. XinFin has XDC that functions much in the same way as XRP by providing a layer upon which institutions can use to access their respective networks. Both coins have a maximum supply of 100 billion, large caps that, in basic terms, cushion the platforms against wild price swings that can occur due to market manipulation. At the moment, XRP has a total circulating supply of 39 billion coins, XDC has 6 billion, while XDCE (a tradable and swappable counterpart of XDC01) currently has 3 billion coins in circulation.
Cryptocurrency solutionsBoth platforms are designed to provide highly scalable and extremely low-cost settlement layers using their native currencies. The challenge of having increased bloated costs make generation 1.0 and 2.0 cryptocurrencies unsuitable to financial institutions as they contribute to the same problems of wastage and inefficiency.
The XDC Protocol by XinFin.org aims to eliminate the several of these inefficiencies facing global trade and financial institutions. The main goal is to enable these institutions to provide real-time payments settlement.
The same approach is what led to the development of XRP. When XinFin rolls out its XDC protocol, the impact will be similar to that of Ripple in global finance. Just as XRP is used to access the RippleNet’s services, so does XinFin’s coin (XDC).
When it comes to network speed and transaction confirmation, both XinFin, and Ripple provide a much better solution compared to Bitcoin and Ethereum. While it takes Ripple about 3.5 seconds to confirm a transaction, XinFin handles that on-demand. In terms of the total number of transactions that the networks can handle, each can comfortably handle more than 300 TPS. In fact, they can scale to handle much higher, each capable of a throughput similar to that of VISA. The super-fast speed makes it possible for the networks to provide real-time cross-border transactional settlements.
XinFin (XDCE) currently trades at $0.010 against the US dollar, a price similar to Ripple’s in September 2013. The price won’t spike exponentially to the levels of Bitcoin or other coins with low maximum supply. It will likely follow the trajectory of XRP over the years. However, due to the increased awareness and acceptance of cryptocurrency, the coin’s value will likely reach XRP’s current value within a year or two.
XinFin’s approach and ecosystem are designed to offer solutions to the issues that face the public and private blockchain platforms. It has what Ripple has and can truly revolutionize the global trade and financial institutions. However, XinFin (XDCE) achieves much more that Ripple as it provides for Smart contracts on top of the financial settlements.