I used to think rippling was just a quirk. Turns out it's the whole point of XRPL's design, and most people using the network have no idea it's happening. Here's the weird part: when you hold a trustline to an issuer and someone else does too, XRP can route a payment through your balance. You don't approve each transfer. It just happens. That's rippling. Say Alice trusts Bitstamp for USD. Bob trusts Bitstamp for USD. Alice can pay Bob in USD without Bitstamp moving anything on-chain, the ledger just shifts balances across the shared trust path. Bitstamp is the bridge, but they never touch the transaction. This is powerful for liquidity. It's also why "No Ripple" flags exist, because most token holders don't want strangers routing payments through their balances without realizing it. Building Rhyzlo taught me to take trustlines seriously. Every one you add is a financial relationship with real mechanics attached. Default rippling settings can expose you in ways that aren't obvious until you dig into the raw account data. If you're a developer: understand ripple flags before you build payment flows. If you're a user: know what you're trusting before you add it.