What began as a dispute on Friday is developing into a Blockchain civil war which will be fought in the most unlikely places.

Ripple Labs Inc and R3 Inc are locked in a battle and its getting interesting. @BlockRush will pop our nose into the issue. Enjoy.

Who are R3?

R# is a banking Blockchain consortium which is developing banking Blockchain infrastructure for banks. R3 boasts of over 70 global banks including;

Bank of England,
Bank of Canada,
Goldman Sachs, Santander,
Morgan Stanley,
the mighty Barclays,
BBVA,
Commonwealth Bank of Australia,
Credit Suisse,
Goldman Sachs,
J.P. Morgan,
Royal Bank of Scotland,
State Street,
UBS,
Bank of America,
BNY Mellon,
Citi,
Commerzbank,
Deutsche Bank,
HSBC,
Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group,
Morgan Stanley,
National Australia Bank,
Royal Bank of Canada,
Société Générale,
Wells Fargo.

Who are Ripple?

Ripple Labs a distributed ledger company behind the real-time gross settlement system (RTGS), currency exchange and remittance network.

The Ripple crypto-currency was the third largest crypto-currency by market cap - prior to Bitcoin Cash and is now the fourth largest.

Ripple was developed long before Bitcoin and is currently being used by over 90 customers including banks, payment providers and other firms.

Some of their customers include:

UniCredit
Standard Charted
UBS
Reise Bank
BMO
WestPAC
RBC
Axis Bank
CIBC
SCB
Santander

What are the two fighting over?

The issue is simple, both parties are suing each other over betrayal - yes, betrayal. Can you imagine Blockchain companies being treacherous?

R3 claims that Ripple has attempted to cancel a deal they signed in 2016 to allow R3 to buy upto 5 billion XRPs for $0.0085 per unit until September 2019.

Ripple also claims that R3 has denied it the right to access some of their resources, intelligence and access to the the banks in their banking consortium.

Irony of the battle

The irony of the whole battle is the fact that it is being fought in a centralized institution! Yes, two anarchist turn to the State to resolve their despite!

When two nationalists fight, they turn to the State to resolve their disputes. However when two anarchists and cyberpunks fight, how on Earth do they also turn to the State?

Perhaps they are using the law courts because they are both registered and regulated companies, or because there is not other "Blockchain-powered dispute resolution" system.

What the fork? What do you think? Let's get talking in the comments.

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