Ripple’s longtime CTO, now emeritus, and XRP Ledger co-architect, David Schwartz, revealed two of the ecosystem’s strangest origin stories. They involve Arthur Britto, cognitive oddities and a Grateful Dead song.
It all started with a question about who first coined the term “drop” for the smallest unit of XRP. According to Schwartz — while he could not say definitively — his best guess was Arthur Britto.
The only connection that I know of is that we got http://ripple.com from a [Grateful] Dead fan who registered the domain because of the song. - David Schwartz, CTO Emeritus at Ripple
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He then opened up with a rare comparison between himself and Britto, explaining that while he operates on a high level of conventional intelligence, Britto's intellect functions on an entirely different plane, possessing traits that most people lack.
While Schwartz processes quickly, Britto used to ask him to slow down during explanations, even when discussing his own ideas.
Grateful Dead and Ripple? Yes!
Next, the conversation veered into Ripple trivia, when another user brought up the fact that the company’s name overlaps with a Grateful Dead song and that Ripple’s old 404 page once featured the band's "Dancing Bear."
It turns out there was indeed a connection, as Schwartz explained that Ripple acquired its domain name from a fan of the band, who had registered it years prior because of that song — not because of any direct company decision.
So, for now, Schwartz demystified three longstanding questions in the XRP community: the origin of the term "drop," the difference in intelligence between the two XRP architects and the musical roots behind Ripple's online identity.
On a casual Thursday, the legacy behind XRP and Ripple just got a little deeper and a lot more eccentric.
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