As part of its ongoing commitment to ecosystem expansion, popular blockchain company Ripple is distributing 1 billion XRP tokens to developers that build on its payment-focused ledger.
At the moment, the tokens have a market valuation of nearly $790 million.
Late Thursday, XRP price was at $0.795389, with a 24-hour trading volume of $2,416,871,021. The cryptocurrency has gained 2.70% during the last 24 hours.
XRP is now ranked sixth on CoinMarketCap, having a market cap of $37.7 billion.
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Ripple Grant For The Next Decades
According to various sources, the San Francisco-based blockchain organization wants to completely disperse the assets among developers during the next 10 to 20 years.
Ripple has previously undertaken similar efforts to grow the XRP ecosystem.
In 2019, the company’s offshoot dubbed Xpring presented a 1 billion XRP donation to web monetization service Coil for the purpose of establishing an ecosystem of developers, businesses, and non-for-profit groups that will utilize its native coin.
Additionally, in October of last year, Ripple gave $2 million to around 25 software engineers building on the XRP Ledger.
Some 50 open-source projects received financial support totaling more than $6 million through the program.
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XRP total market cap at $38.12 billion on the daily chart | Source: TradingView.com
Ripple’s Strong Foothold
The blockchain giant has established a strong presence in the Asia-Pacific zone with its RippleNet remittance technology, which is based on XRPL.
RippleNet is a decentralized worldwide network of banks and payment companies that makes use of Ripple’s distributed financial technology to enable real-time gross settlement, messaging, and clearing.
The money transfer platform has teamed with hundreds of institutions to develop its own payment network.
According to Monica Long, general manager of RippleX, the developer community has shown “significant growth and passion for building on the XRP Ledger” that has only expanded since the XRPL Grants program debuted last year.
Head Developer Quits
Meanwhile, the latest developer grant announcement comes on the heels of Matt Hamilton, the company’s Principal Developer Advocate, announcing his resignation.
Hamilton bared his departure in a blog post, citing “personal issues.” He acknowledged that this choice may come as a surprise, but Friday will mark his final day with the company.
Hamilton formerly worked for IBM and HP and joined Ripple in January to work on building the XRP ecosystem.
In another development, a recent document published by attorney Jeremy Hogan in a tweet indicates that Ripple anticipates concluding its court battle with the US Securities and Exchange Commission between August 26 and November 18, this year.
Featured image from Block Telegraph, chart from TradingView.com