Unlike Bitcoin or Ethereum, the XRPL uses a unique Federated Consensus mechanism as its method of validating transactions. Transactions are confirmed on the XRPL through a consensus protocol, in which designated independent servers called validators come to an agreement on the order and outcome of XRP transactions. All servers in the network process each transaction according to the same rules, and any transaction that follows the protocol is confirmed right away. All transactions are public and transparent, and anyone can operate a validator. There are currently over 150 validators on the ledger, operated by universities, exchanges, businesses, and individuals around the world. Through the Federated Consensus mechanism, all verified transactions can be processed without a single point of failure as no single participant makes a decision independently.

The XRP Ledger architects gifted 80 billion XRP to Ripple so that the company could build use cases — including its global payments network, RippleNet — around the digital asset.

The XRP Ledger presents a wide variety of applications and use cases related to payments including micropayments, DeFi, and, soon, NFTs. Deployed in 2012, the XRPL supports enterprises and Python, Java and JavaScript developers with powerful utility and flexibility. On the XRP website, developers can access different tutorials to help them get started using different coding languages, building apps, managing accounts and more. Alongside its native coin, XRP, the XRP Ledger is used by developers to create solutions that solve inefficiencies, including remittance and asset tokenization. Currently, the five main applications of the XRP Ledger are payments, tokenization, DeFi, CBDCs and stablecoins.

In 2012, David Schwartz, Jed McCaleb and Arthur Britto launched the XRP Ledger with its native currency XRP as a faster, more energy-efficient alternative to the Bitcoin blockchain. In September that year, along with Chris Larsen, they founded the company that is today known as Ripple.

Launched in 2021, the [XRP Ledger (XRPL)](http://www.xrpl.org) is an open-source, permissionless and decentralized technology. Benefits of the XRP Ledger include its low-cost ($0.0002 to transact), speed (settling transactions in 3-5 seconds), scalability (1,500 transactions per second) and inherently green attributes (carbon-neutral and energy-efficient). The XRP Ledger also features the first decentralized exchange (DEX) and custom tokenization capabilities built into the protocol. Since 2012, the XRP Ledger has been operating reliably, having closed 70 million ledgers.