Ripple is the catchall name for the cryptocurrency platform, the transactional protocol for which is actually XRP, in the same fashion as Ethereum is the name for the platform that facilitates trades in Ether. Like other cryptocurrencies, Ripple is built atop the idea of a distributed ledger network which requires various parties to participate in validating transactions, rather than any singular centralized authority. That facilitates transactions all over the world, and transfer fees are far cheaper than the likes of bitcoin. Unlike other cryptocurrencies, XRP transfers are effectively immediate, requiring no typical confirmation time. Ripple was originally founded by a single company, Ripple Labs, and continues to be backed by it, rather than the larger network of developers that continue bitcoin’s development. It also doesn’t have a fluctuating amount of its currency in existence. Where bitcoin has a continually growing pool with an eventual maximum, and Ethereum theoretically has no limit, Ripple was created with all of its 100 billion XRP tokens right out of the gate. That number is maintained with no mining and most of the tokens are owned and held by Ripple Labs itself — around 60 billion at the latest count. Even at the recently reduced value of around half a dollar per XRP, that means Ripple Labs is currently sitting on around $20 billion worth of the cryptocurrency (note: Ripple’s price crashed hard recently, and may be worth far less than $60 billion by time you read this). It holds 55 billion XRP in an escrow account, which allows it to sell up to a billion per month if it so chooses in order to fund new projects and acquisitions. Selling such an amount would likely have a drastic effect on the cryptocurrency’s value, and isn’t something Ripple Labs plans to do anytime soon. In actuality, Ripple Labs is looking to leverage the technology behind XRP to allow for faster banking transactions around the world. While Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are built on the idea of separating financial transactions from the financial organizations of traditional currencies, Ripple is almost the opposite in every sense. XRP by Ripple price can be found on this page alongside the market capitalization and additional stats.
DAOstack is an operational stack for DAOs, a comprehensive toolkit for decentralized collaboration at scale. It provides the governance and economic framework needed for collectives to self-organize around shared goals and interests. DAOstack is based on a fully open, modular and upgradable architecture. DAOs are open, self-organized collectives coordinated by economic incentives and self-executing code, cooperating around shared goals. Powered by the network effect, DAOs provide a revenue model and incentive for the production of open, shareable resources (such as open-source code and a music file). With the creation of more open resources, the DAO will be able to scale indefinitely while keeping its agility and coherence,and in many cases out compete existing corporate structures. DAOs have attracted top talents in the blockchain space, holding promise for more efficient and resilient organizations. Despite this, they have lacked critical elements to be successfully deployed so far, and in particular an adequate decentralized governance system. DAOstack is an operating system for DAOs. With DAOstack, thousands of open-source creators can jointly produce decentralized applications (DApps), while distributing individual ownership in the product to contributors of value. Crowd curators can cooperatively own and manage multi-valued ranking systems to compete with Yelp, TripAdvisor, or YouTube. And autonomous networks can run their collective investment or insurance fund. We believe DAOs will radically change the way people organize, from startups to corporations, to nonprofits and even nation-states. DAOstack develops the foundational elements needed to enable this transition to the future of work.