In an official statement published by the Ripple development team, the company announced the launch of a new update for their network server. The new update was named rippled and the new version 1.0.0 is already available for all the operators in the Ripple network. This update is the first stable alpha version of this software. This is what the developers said in the announcement: “Today, after almost 6 years of hard work, Ripple is very pleased to announce the release of rippled version 1.0.0.The rippled v1.0.0 release includes incremental improvements to several previously released features. v1.0.0 also symbolizes the growing maturity of the software and the increased stability of the decentralized, growing network of nodes that are running the software all around the world. Moving forward, rippled will continue to use semantic versioning (MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH), to help organize and track future releases.
Ripple recommends that all server operators upgrade to rippled v1.0.0 by Thursday, 2018-06-14, for service continuity.”
The developers did not provide any more details about the improvements incorporated in the new update.
Basically, rippled functions as a software for the peer-to-peer (P2P) server of the Riple blockchain network. The software is written in the C++ programming language and serves as an online tool for sending RPC commands to a server, validating the accounting books, facilitating the communication in the network, as well as acting as a Proof-of-Work (PoW) server, among other functions. This is how Ripple explains rippled: “rippled is the C++ reference implementation of the decentralized XRP Ledger. It is open source and permissively licensed under the ISC.
What is the XRP Ledger?
The XRP Ledger is a public decentralized cryptographic ledger powered by a global network of peer-to-peer servers. The XRP Ledger is the root ledger of XRP, a digital asset designed to bridge global currencies for payments. As a software company, Ripple contributes to the open source development of the XRP Ledger, in support of the Internet of Value: a world in which money moves the way information does today.”
It is worth mentioning that the Ripple development team advises all the users that operate servers in the Ripple blockchain network to update to the new version no later than June 14th, 2018, in order to be able to guarantee the continuity of the service.
The Ripple development team uses its bug reward programme to revise the code of rippled. This way the users can scroll through the code and if they find any bug, vulnerability or exploit, the company will reward them for their effort and help. The programme is called BugBounty and this is what the company says about it: “We are offering a bounty for any security-relevant bugs in our software offerings (https://github.com/ripple). The definition of bugs includes exploits, vulnerabilities and information about ongoing attacks against Ripple’s software. The amount we pay varies dramatically. Vulnerabilities that are harmless on their own, but could form part of a critical exploit will usually receive a bounty. Full-blown exploits can receive much higher bounties.
Please don’t hold back partial vulnerabilities while trying to construct a full-blown exploit. We will pay a large bounty to anyone who reports a complete chain of vulnerabilities even if they have reported each component of the exploit separately and those vulnerabilities have been fixed in the meantime. However, to qualify for a the full bounty, you must to have been the first to report each of the partial exploits.”
The Ripple blockchain platform is focused on facilitating services and connections to the international financial system. A few weeks ago, the Ripple team published the first result of its pilot programme called xRapid. The goal of the new programme was to lower the commissions for cross-border payments between 40% and 70%.
