I've been building on XRPL for a while now, and I still see people dismissing it because it's "not proof-of-work or proof-of-stake." Like those are the only two valid options. They're not. XRPL uses a federated consensus model. A small set of trusted validators have to agree, 80% threshold, before a ledger closes. No mining. No staking rewards. No validator competition. Just agreement. Critics say that makes it centralized. And honestly, that critique isn't crazy. But here's what they miss: Ripple doesn't control those validators. Anyone can run one. The default validator list is a starting point, not a chokehold. What this actually means for users? Finality in 3-5 seconds. No forks. No mempool congestion games. When I'm building trustline logic, I don't have to account for reorgs or uncle blocks. That's a real, practical advantage that gets buried under the consensus debate noise.