The XRP community has descended on Stellar’s CEO Jed McCaleb after a subtle jab at the predicament of XRP’s parent company, Ripple. Both communities, which are always at loggerheads, were fired up this weekend after a post by the Build on Stellar (@BuildOnStellar) account.
The handle took a slight jab at Ripple in a recent post, referring to the protracted lawsuit between the company and the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). In the post, the handle indicated that some projects have been spending more money on lawyers than developers in the last few years, calling it progress.
While the handle seemed to have made no direct attacks on Ripple, the XRP community did not find it funny, making sure everyone in the crypto community knew it. The community has been hailed as one of the best in the crypto industry, with one-time antagonist Cardano CEO Charles Hoskinson hailing them for their perseverance and belief in the project. He mentioned that they had believed in the project even through the period that the SEC ordered exchanges to delist the token.
John E. Deaton calls out McCaleb
The XRP community has shown its disdain towards the Stellar dev handle, with most of its members advocating for holders of the token to start dumping them. Others even had bad words for the project, calling it a copycat of XRP. Others noted that despite copying Ripple, XLM has not been able to reach the height that XRP has reached even with the legal issues.
While the name-calling and bad words have been going on, pro-XRP legal representative John E. Deaton had words for Jed McCaleb. Deaton represented XRP holders in their class action against the SEC over its treatment of the token. Deaton criticized McCaleb, mentioning that it is ill-conceived that a founder is taking public shots at a company he co-founded. He mentioned that the most disappointing aspect is that he is doing it amid the legal battle.
Imagine a founder publicly taking shots at the company he co-founded, after the company was targeted by the @SECGov, likely with his help, for spending $150 million in legal fees because the SEC said it was illegal for that company to have sold $1.3 billion in XRP sales. Now… https://t.co/mCvTVnxkHB
— John E Deaton (@JohnEDeaton1) February 8, 2025
Deaton mentioned that even though it looked like the company was targeted and forced to spend over $150 million in legal fees because it sold $1.3 billion worth of XRP, McCaleb still made a lot of money. Deaton mentioned that McCaleb netted $2 billion from the sale of XRP tokens.
“Now imagine that same co-founder sitting back and making $2 billion from XRP sales AFTER the lawsuit against his former company was filed and WHILE his former partners were spending that $150M to save the company he co-founded,” he said.
XRP army trash XLM as feud escalates
The post also angered Ripple’s Chief Technology Officer David Schwartz, who took to his X account to issue a response. He took the veiled route, saying “If you go after the king, you might as well not miss.” The comment was hailed by the community, as it pushed them to fight back for the project that they clearly love.
The tensions between Stellar and XRP go back a long way, since Jed McCaleb left the company and co-founded Stellar. However, some comments suggest that there is something about the latest jab that feels different. There have also been questions regarding the intention, with some comments noting that it might just be an innocent comment while others are pushing a more intentional approach.
Some users feel that McCaleb’s previous and present actions are no different, noting the timing and the undertone of the comment and the broader history between the projects. While there has been little to differentiate the tokens, the key differences have been their mechanism, distribution, and design.
In November 2024, McCaleb released a lengthy post to defend Stellar, adding that it is one of the most underrated projects in the crypto industry. He added that the project carries out up to 10x more transactions compared to Ethereum. “Many real people are already using it for actual real-world transactions,” McCaleb said. He also said that the blockchain boasts ‘world-class’ engineering.
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