Many of the Etherium investors criticized the news, which pleased Vitalik, because this criticism of the sanctions was without prejudice to his project. That said, David Hoffman, founder of the Bankless portal, also left a comment. He said he would have no problem with the exchanges also significantly restricting XRP transactions. Vitalik agreed, much to the dismay of Ripple CTO David Schwartz.

What is Vitalik Buterin being criticised for?

Vitalik’s tweet mentioning Ripple’s litigation with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) caused a scandal. Here’s his rejoinder, cited by CryptoSlate.

XRP already lost its right to protect itself when Ripple stonewalled us by calling it a “Chinese” project.

This is about Ripple’s court documents in which the team referred to Bitcoin and Etherium as projects controlled by the Chinese government or related bodies. This comes as part of a legal battle between Ripple and the SEC, which has been ongoing for several years. The SEC is trying to declare XRP a security and apply strict regulatory rules to the token, but Ripple strongly disagrees. That’s why they’re using that argument – BTC and ETH are supposed to be considered securities, but the Securities and Exchange Commission hasn’t declared them securities.

In other words, Ripple advocates were prepared to cause problems for the digital asset industry leaders BTC and ETH if regulators wanted to equate XRP with securities. And this approach has received criticism within the cryptocurrency community.

A quote from Ripple’s court documents. where the company did refer to Etherium as a “Chinese project”

According to Cointelegraph, Vitalik’s tweet quickly caught the attention of Ripple’s technical director Schwartz. He responded to it with the following message.

“The government should punish projects that don’t align with our agenda.” Yes, this is quite in the spirit of the Etherium team.

In another tweet, David Schwartz compared Bitcoin and Etherium miners to eBay shareholders.

Also, I think it’s perfectly fair to compare miners to company shareholders. Just as eBay shareholders make money from friction between buyers and sellers that eBay does not eliminate, so do miners in ETH and BTC make money from artificial fluctuations in the crypto market.

Ripple technical director David Schwartz

There has been a cold war between the creators of Etherium and Ripple for the past few years. As recently as last year, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghaus claimed that the SEC allegedly favoured Ether and had a clear bias against XRP. Garlinghouse mentioned that in 2018, former SEC head William Hinman refused to recognise Etherium as a security. Yes, and the regulator’s pressure on Ripple allegedly confirms the hypotheses within the company.

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The XRP fan community has also openly criticised Buterin’s words. Some have even accused the altcoin creator of stealing intellectual property – he allegedly copied the idea of smart contracts from a project called Codius inside Ripple. To recap, it appeared before the release of Etherium, and it did feature the ability to create “smart programs” – a kind of prototype of today’s smart contracts. However, the position of XRP fans in this case is one-sided, so it should not be taken as unequivocal truth.

Codius was “stillborn” – its support ceased in 2018

But user Frankie Sposari, in a message to Vitalik, touched on a very popular topic in criticism of Etherium – the high commissions of the altcoin.

I stopped paying attention to you and ETH when I was trying to buy a $100 coin. Turns out I had to pay a commission of $380. Etherium is rubbish when its network gets crowded.

Indeed, high commissions are a sore subject for all ETH holders, but it will eventually be resolved. September will see the altcoin move to the Proof-of-Stake consensus algorithm, after which the next major update will be the introduction of so-called sharding. This, along with the development of layer 2 solutions, will make Etherium more scalable and cheaper to use.

Even now, it is noticeably cheaper to transact on Eth than it used to be.

The level of fees on the Etherium network on August 19, 2022

I wonder what the arguments of XRP fans will be after this? In any case, Ripple management's claims against Buterin don't look very appropriate now. They did try to damage the reputation of the project and the digital asset industry with a not very ethical gesture in court. So Vitalik's comment seems fair enough.

Etherium creator Vitalik Buterin

We think Vitalik Buterin's comment turned out to be quite fair, as Ripple employees were indeed trying to cover themselves at the expense of Etherium and Bitcoin in court. And the community's criticism of the alleged plagiarism of smart contracts doesn't seem convincing either. Still, in that context, XRP is a plagiarism of BTC - as are the other coins. And there's no point in such an approach, because it's certainly not good for the coin niche.

Which side in the argument would you support? Share your opinion on it in our millionaires’ crypto chat.