Justin Bons (저스틴 본스), founder of Cyber Capital, has criticised the XRP Ledger's claims of decentralisation head-on, U.Today reported on Oct. 8.

Bons posted on X, formerly Twitter, saying, "Selling XRP to retail investors as decentralised is an obvious scam." He cited XRPL's recent use of undocumented software code during development as an example of flaws in its governance and consensus system. He said XRPL has been operating with closed-source code for about two weeks and believed changes would become mandatory on Oct. 9.

XRPL developers rushed out version 3.4.1 of its server software on Sept. 25. The update addresses a security-related issue and adds the 'fixBatchV1_2' amendment. The developers said they are not releasing the sensitive security patch in the current source code and plan to disclose it with a technical retrospective. If the amendment is activated on Oct. 9 while maintaining sufficient support, older-version servers will become amendment-blocked and will not be able to synchronise with the network.

Bons said not releasing the source code fuels unnecessary security concerns.

At the centre of the dispute is XRPL's Unique Node List model. Unlike Bitcoin, which uses proof-of-work, XRPL relies on validators trusted by participants. Ripple and the XRP Ledger Foundation publish a recommended validator list, which is used in default server settings. Anyone can run a validator, but it must be included in other participants' trust lists to affect consensus. Node operators can use any validators they want, but XRPL documentation warns that using inappropriate shared lists can cause divergence from the network. Bons said the entities that issue the recommended list have excessive influence over the network.