Rumors of Convergence: Will Ripple Combine Its Three Products?

Over the past few weeks, a Ripple leader has been hinting that Ripple’s three major services will be consolidated into a single service.

The Ripple network and the XRP token serve as a bridge between foreign currencies, and Ripple has aimed to form partnerships with various financial institutions. Although there is some overlap, each product targets a different audience with different needs—banks, payment processors, and businesses.

Now, it looks like those differences may be brought together: a few weeks ago, Jim Chauncey-Kelly, Ripple’s Director of Talent Acquisition, originally disclosed the potential product consolidation in a message sent out to potential hires.

“We are building a software called Convergence that syncs together all of our 3 major products into one seamless format,” said Chauncey-Kelly.

Recently, a tweet from Chauncey-Kelly reiterated the possibility of product convergence:

“Hi All – for clarity — we have 3 products – xCurrent (in production) and 2 more on the way – xVia & xRapid. They will be on a ‘convergence’ release soon. There is not a software actually called ‘convergence’.”

Just a Rumor?

Both the hiring document and the tweet were later deleted for reasons that we can only speculate on. It’s impossible to tell whether the deletion is because a product consolidation isn’t going to happen soon, because Ripple is sitting quietly on an official announcement, or simply because Chauncey-Kelly’s statements conflicted.

Nevertheless, a convergence does seem likely: all three products operate on the same network, RippleNet. The result of a product consolidation would likely be a more easy-to-use and more widely popular product for the financial industry.

However, improvements may not be appreciated by the entire crypto community. Ripple’s coziness with the finance industry has been controversial among decentralization advocates. This has led to confusion in the community, which sometimes exaggerates Ripple’s control of XRP.

Although Ripple’s CTO, David Schwarz, often independently tries to clarify misconceptions, Ripple’s media presence mainly involves promotion of its services and announcements of partnerships. Time will tell how the community reacts to an official announcement.