Ripple was initially released in 2012 by Ripple Labs Inc., a tech company based out of the United States. It is a payment protocol that provides cheap and quick transactions, allowing for financial institutions to move large quantities of money in little time for next to no cost. The Ripple network is now fully operable, with a stable release (1.0.0) of the network having come out in May of 2018. The Ripple Foundation has been criticized by the cryptocurrency community for not being completely decentralized, as the foundation itself maintains control of the coin’s ledger.