On Aug 21, 2019, kompany announced that their API platform, BREX, had brought 5 more XRP Ledger validator nodes live, for a total of 6 nodes verifying thousands of transactions each, every day.
And now there are 6 – We’re happy to announce that kompany's #API Platform BREX has taken 5 more #RippleNet XRP Ledger validator nodes live. Each of our 6 nodes verifies thousands of transactions per day for the @Ripple network.https://t.co/XD8jKtE2QY#kompany #RegTech #KYC pic.twitter.com/NfPGZipE3F
— kompany (@kompany) August 21, 2019
“BREX – the kompany API, provides real-time access to structured, official and authoritative commercial register data, including company filings covering more than 100+ million companies in 90+ countries and jurisdictions.”
– http://brex.io
The debate on whether XRP is centralized or not has been going on for almost as long as XRP has existed. Its use of a Proof of Consensus algorithm instead of Proof of Work has been controversial and some people are of the view that Ripple has an uncomfortable level of influence on the network.
Regardless, we know that more validators on the network means more decentralisation. So, having more validators added is good news for the decentralised XRP argument and incentive for others to hop on board.
However, as a verified XRP validator, kompany hasn’t made it entirely clear why they are maintaining so many validator nodes because, as Twitter user @RabbitKickClub pointed out, running multiple validators doesn’t have any tangible benefits for the XRP Ledger.
There are other nodes like hubs or websocket servers that could be more useful, since running multiple validators doesn't have any tangible benefit for the XRP Ledger.
Maybe consider converting some of your validators?
— rabbit (@RabbitKickClub) August 21, 2019
Nik Bougalis, the software engineer leading the C++ development team at Ripple, responded to the announcement on Twitter by urging kompany to operate just one validator node and repurpose the other five into a client access pool.
I appreciate @kompany’s commitment—your https://t.co/b9Ol9E2uN3 validator is highly reliable; kudos to your team! But as others have said, there’s issues too.
I’d urge you to consider operating a single validator and repurposing the other 5 servers into a client access pool.
— Nik Bougalis (@nbougalis) August 21, 2019
More validators also means more transaction volumes are possible.
There are currently 88 verified validators on the XRP network and only 21% of the nodes on the default UNL are run by Ripple themselves.
