In a recent social media post, David Schwartz, chief technology officer at Ripple, has explained who the real XRP stakeholders are. 

According to the prominent executive, he believes XRPL’s real stakeholders are people who actually use it to transact (payments, token transfers, and so on), those who "want to be their own bank" (a nod to decentralization), and people who run nodes for their own benefit, not for profit.

Debate over Ripple's actual value  

Earlier this week, there was a stir over a report claiming that the company is not worth anything outside of XRP holdings following the announcement of the $500 million funding round. One VC has stated that no one actually uses Ripple's tech. The XRP Ledger (XRPL) itself has little organic usage.

However, some users push back, arguing that the reporter is being “lazy” by equating network fees on the XRPL (which are tiny, less than a penny) with Ripple’s valuation as a company.

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XRPL doesn’t pay validators or nodes the way Bitcoin (miners) or Ethereum (stakers) do. On XRPL, validators aren’t paid since they participate voluntarily (often because they need to run a node for their own business or use case).

In Schwartz's view, networks that pay validators are introducing middlemen. XRPL, by contrast, aims to let users transact without intermediaries.

"If a blockchain can work just as well for the people who use it to transact without paid middlemen who tax other people's transactions, then that's probably better for the people who use the blockchain to transact," he said. 

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