The San Francisco-based crypto-lending platform Dharma has responded to questions surrounding its relationship with Xpring, following the controversy that has been brewing between Ripple and the XRP community.
Ripple’s XRP Controversy
Earlier in the week, a flurry of debate began surrounding the negative impact of Ripple selling XRP to clients, which many in the cryptocurrency community view to be detrimental to the coin’s value. On Aug. 26, Twitter user CryptoBitlord proposed a hard fork of XRP to avoid the ongoing situation,
I’m thinking about forking $XRP so we don’t have to deal with the founders dumping.
-This will be a community effort.
Retweet if you’re in 🚀🚀🚀
— CRYPTO BITLORD (@Crypto_Bitlord) August 26, 2019
Community backlash ensued, with some XRP investors supporting the fork and outrage towards Ripple. Brad Garlinghouse, CEO of the blockchain-based startup, took to twitter to defend Ripple’s XRP sales as a benefit to the cryptocurrency’s growth and development.
I'm always struck by the questionable sources (i'm being generous here) spreading FUD about #XRP and @Ripple. Even more so over the last few weeks (Ripple's XRP sales, litigation etc)…. thus, I feel compelled to comment
— Brad Garlinghouse (@bgarlinghouse) August 27, 2019
Garlinghouse included Dharma in the list of businesses supported by XRP sales,
2/ XRP sales are about helping expand XRP's utility – building RippleNet & supporting other biz building w/XRP ie Dharma & Forte. Reality is we DECREASED our sales by volume Q/Q and since then the inflation rate of XRP circulating supply has been lower than that of BTC and ETH.
— Brad Garlinghouse (@bgarlinghouse) August 27, 2019
Dharma Labs is one of the companies funded by Xpring, an investing initiative designed by Ripple to incubate and support crypto-projects. However, community members began to further question the relationship between Dharma and Ripple, in particular, whether the lending platform utilizing the XRP token.
Hello! Congrats on the launch of Dharma V2!!
In other matters, could you please help clarifying Dharma's relationship with Ripple? I understand you received funding from xPring and others, but the following tweet suggests you might be working with XRP?https://t.co/fom9Bzs9eK
— XRP Research Center (@XrpCenter) August 29, 2019
Dharma took to Twitter in the aftermath of Garlinghouse’s comment, explaining that while Xpring is an investor for the project, the lending platform does not utilize any XRP-based features,
Hi there, xPring is an investor, and we've explored collaborations, but we are not actively working on any XRP related features at the moment
— Dharma (@Dharma_HQ) August 29, 2019
While Dharma may have cleared the air with Xpring, it now has some community members questioning why a project funded by a Ripple incubator is not using XRP.