This is the fifth and final article in my series of articles about controversial Avalanche facts. In my previous articles I explained how Avalanche has a better claim to being a Store of Value than Bitcoin, a better claim to being a World Computer than Ethereum, a better claim to being a Peer-To-Peer Electronic Cash System than Bitcoin Cash, and has a better claim to being a Darknet Currency than Monero. In this article I will explain how Avalanche has a better claim to being a Regulatory-Friendly Global Payments Network than Ripple.

Avalanche Is More Regulatory-Friendly Because of Its Customizability

Ripple is a single blockchain with a single virtual machine with a fairly centralized cartel of nodes governing it. Avalanche on the other hand has a toolset that Ripple does not have, and this is the ability to create subnetworks and new blockchains with customized features, such as ones that enforce regulatory compliance for example. These subnets are perfectly interoperable with the Avalanche token, can share or use a new virtual machine, and can be either decentralized or have more centralized properties.

Rules surrounding how much money can be sent, when money can be sent, to whom or where in the world it can be sent, and registration of the individuals using the network are all examples of things that can be built on a private, custom subnet.

Ripple does not have a robust framework for enforcing rules such as this, besides being relatively centralized at the base layer, forcing us to come to the conclusion that Ripple is either not regulatory-friendly, or it does not hold the properties of a decentralized blockchain.

Avalanche can have infinitely many subnetworks with customizable virtual machines, so it can do anything needed to follow any specific set of rules.

Avalanche Is Faster, More Secure, and More Decentralized

Avalanche latency and finality is typically subsecond and all works on a single asynchronous ledger. Ripple takes about five seconds and reissues the ledger every time transactions are confirmed.

This is despite Ripple using a classical-based consensus protocol and having fewer validators than Avalanche. At the time of writing, Ripple has 36 validators, and Avalanche has over 500 going on 600, with no technical limit to how many there can be. Avalanche consensus provides a faster and more robust consensus mechanism than even the classical consensus mechanism used by Ripple.

Using a classical consensus mechanism, Ripple isnt completely safe past a 33% attack. Avalanche uses Avalanche Consensus, which guarantees its safe at least with a 51% attack, and can retain safety (without liveness) up to a 80% attack. The security guaruntees of Avalanche are much stronger, while being at least 20x more decentralized and five times faster than Ripple.

Avalanche Is More Robust and Offers More Options

Avalanche is a far more advanced and robust technology than Ripple, and offers more options to adopting financial institutions. Different financial institutions have different regulations they need to follow, different practices they want to engage in, and different levels of trustworthiness, security, and control for their given usecases.

For example, some financial institutions may decide to create a subnet where they control around 30% of all nodes by default, creating some decentralization but also having a strong veto power. Others may want a fully private/centralized chain, or a fully public/decentralized chain, but might also have other requirements, such as KYC, immutable history of payments, geographic transparency, etc… Regardless of the implementation, different financial institutions have different needs that need to be met, and a single-blockchain + single-virtual machine chain such as Ripple does not provide that.

Avalanche also has support for complex smart contracts, the EVM, and allows for adopting financial institutions to be more creative with how they share liquidity with each other. Ripple does not have this same smart contract capability.

Conclusion

Avalanche is orders of magnitude more decentralized, faster, more secure, more robust, more feature-rich, and more regulatory-friendly than Ripple. With the innovation of Avalanche consensus we can do everything much more efficiently than Classical Consensus and it also offers customizability options that make it stand out from Ripple.

Avalanche will do a much better job at moving money around the globe, and most important of all, it does it without being centralized.

---

Avalanche As A More Legitimate and Regulatory-Friendly Global Payments Network Than Ripple was originally published in Avalanche Hub on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.