XRP (CRYPTO: XRP), the cryptocurrency associated with Ripple Inc, may have arrived late for the non fungible token party but the team behind it is confident in its plan to compete against Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH).
What Happened: Ripple Chief Technology Officer David Schwartz said in an interview with Cointelegraph that the project was not too late for XRP to make its mark on the NFT space.
“We were a little late to the party, but not too late. If NFTs are successful, then we are all still early,” said Schwartz.
The Ripple executive told Cointelegraph that scalability was an advantage when it came to XRP Vs> ETH in the context of NFTs. Schwartz noted that there are “things you can do on Ethereum though that you can’t do on the XRP Ledger.”
“If you want to do everything, then you can’t be very good at anything. The XRP Ledger has a list of things it does really well. If one of those are the things you need, that’s great. But, if one isn’t what you need, then you need to move to something more general,” said Schwartz.
The Ripple CTO pointed out that NFTs can be minted on XRP and there’s also a decentralized exchange available and new tokens can be issued. Additionally, payments are “cheap and fast,” reported Cointelegraph.
Why It Matters: The costs to do NFTs on the XRP are significantly less than ETH, as per Schwartz.
“On the XRP Ledger, the cost is a lot lower, so if you are building an NFT on Ethereum it would have to be worth at least $500, and even then the fees would be close to $100. The fees are much less on the XRP Ledger and that allows for a broader range of use cases.”
Singapore-based NFT platform Mintable, which recently raised $13 million in a Series A funding round, has plans to integrate Ripple’s XRP Ledger (XRPL).
XRPL is already carbon neutral and is far more efficient than proof-of-work networks that consume 66 TWh of energy per year, as per a Ripple statement issued in July.
“PoW creates artificial scarcity by using something scarce, which is energy. When energy is purely used to create artificial scarcity though, it drives up cost,” said Schwartz, as per Cointelegraph.
“The only reason you’d want to do this is if you are getting a cut of the money. Only the people getting those fees are promoting that technology.”
In September, Ripple announced a $250 million creator fund to evolve NFT utility, which it said would provide creators with “financial, creative and technical support.”
Price Action: At press time, XRP shot up 9.34% over 24 hours to $1.26 while ETH was up 3.52% at $4,712.72. The second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap touched an all-time high of $4,714.60 on Sunday night.