Ripple is a payment network open source protocol developed by web developer Ryan Fugger, businessman Chris Larsen and programmer Jed McCaleb. Ripple Labs is continuing to work on it. Ripple is on its way to become a distributed peer-to-peer payment system and a foreign exchange market in its last stages of development. Any currency can be supported by the Ripple network (dollars, euros, yen, bitcoin, etc.).
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of the United States filed a lawsuit against Ripple in December 2020, stating that the company behind the XRP cryptocurrency raised $1.3 billion through an unregistered securities offering.