Ripple CTO David Schwartz recently revealed the allocation of 99% of the total XRP supply to the XRP Ledger (XRPL) genesis block of 32,570.
Schwartz revealed this in a recent discussion on X surrounding the The History of XRP Ledger and why its genesis block actually starts from 32,570. A member of the XRP community expressed concern about this reality, asking if the anomaly exists with other blockchain networks as well.
The XRPL anomaly
In particular, XRPL, being in its early stages in its first week of operation, had some bugs that required occasional and consistent fixes.
One of these bugs led to the loss of registry headers. Despite efforts to resolve this issue, reconstruction of the ledger could not proceed due to data loss.
This issue resulted in the loss of previous logs. Consequently, the XRP Register has block 32,570 as its genesis block. However, concerns have arisen regarding the lost data, as some claim that Ripple tries to hide some information about the XRP distribution scheme.
The discussion resurfaced when a member of the XRP community resurrected these concerns, highlighting XRP’s anomalous genesis block. Like the cryptographic base reported this weekSchwartz noted that this same anomaly also exists on the Ethereum blockchain.
However, he stressed that the problem with the XRPL was actually a case of missing data due to a bug and not a deliberate attempt to hide information about the XRP distribution. To clarify this, he then provided information about the allocation of 99% of the XRP supply.
XRP balances in Genesis block
Second for him, while the distribution of Ethereum (ETH) in its genesis block remains unclear, raising strong suspicions, there is transparency on the allocation of the majority of XRP’s supply. For context, a former Ethereum developer claims 70% of ETH distribution occurred before the mine.
To clarify the situation on the distribution of XRP, Schwartz revealed that Jed McCaleb, former CTO of Ripple and one of the architects of XRPL, held 9% of the offering.
It’s worth mentioning McCaleb sold all of his XRP after years of systematic selling following his departure from Ripple.
Additionally, Schwartz noted that Chris Larsen, co-founder and executive chairman of Ripple, also received 9%. However, Arthur Britto, one of the original architects of the XRPL, held 2% of the supply. This translates into 20% held by the co-founders.
Recall that Schwartz had previously revealed that he preferred to receive Ripple shares rather than XRP recently disclosed of The Crypto Basic.
Ripple’s CTO also confirmed that Ripple (formerly OpenCoin) held 79.99% of the total supply, while beta testers and developers held 0.013%.
Ripple then locked up most of its holdings in escrow. The company unlocks 1 billion XRP from escrow wallets every month. However, it relock 800 million tokens shortly thereafter, leaving 200 million as a spendable balance. Ripple seeks to reduce its holdings of XRP as quickly as possible.
Schwartz’s latest disclosure highlights where over 99% of the XRP supply was held in the Genesis block. This was an attempt by Ripple’s CTO to debunk any allegations of suspicious distribution.