CyberCapital founder accuses XRP Ledger of misleading decentralized statements

The controversy over decentralization of XRP ledgers resurfaces: The founder accused investors of misleading

The decentralization of XRP ledgers has once again attracted attention. CyberCapital founder Justin Bons has strongly criticized XRP supporters, accusing retail investors of being misled by false information about the decentralized nature of the system on the eve of the upcoming XRP ledger update.

Bons alleges misleading speech and code confidentiality

Bons describes as fraud the promotion of XRP to retail investors as "decentralized" and points out that recent network changes reflect deeper governance and consensus issues within the XRP ledger. He emphasized the unrecorded and undisclosed nature of recent software code, saying that the project had been running using closed source code for about two weeks.

The controversy escalated further after XRP ledger developers released an emergency server update (version 3.4.1) on September 25, 2025. The update, which contains critical security patches and introduces fixBatchV1_2 fixes, is expected to become mandatory on Friday, October 9. Bons expressed concerns about the temporary lockdown approach taken by the development team and the lack of immediate transparency about sensitive fixes.

"It is outright fraud to sell XRP to retail investors advertised as 'decentralized'," he argued, emphasizing that keeping updated source code private would create unnecessary security risks.

The development team confirmed that security-related changes will not be disclosed in public source code until a full technical review is released. If scheduled fixes are sufficiently supported and activated, servers that fail to update will be blocked to keep up with network progress.

Centralized debate and governance model

The core of the current debate lies in the XRP ledger's reliance on unique node lists (UNL), which is in sharp contrast to Bitcoin's more open proof-of-stake (Note: The original text is Proof-of-Work, which is revised or retained depending on the context. PoW usually corresponds to proof of work, but the contrast in the article is open participation, so the focus is on differences in trust mechanisms). XRP ledgers rely on trusted verifiers, and both Ripple and the XRP ledgers Foundation provide lists of recommended verifiers that are pre-installed in the server configuration.

Although technically anyone can run a network validator, participating nodes can only affect consensus if they are included in the trust list of other participants. According to critics, this effectively concentrates decision-making power in the hands of minority groups.

Official documentation allows node operators to choose their own trusted verifiers, but warns that deviations from a widely shared list can cause nodes to be out of sync with the broader network. Bons asserts that the system gives disproportionate influence and control to those who publish recommendation lists.

The debate over validator selection highlights concerns that publishers of recommendation lists retain considerable power in network governance structures.

For analysts, this governance dynamic raises broader questions about how power and influence are distributed across the XRP ecosystem, especially when compared with other blockchains that prioritize open participation and source code transparency.

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