XAG
XAG is the native cryptocurrency of the XAG Ledger. All accounts in the XAG Ledger can send XAG among one another and must hold a minimum amount of XAG as a reserve. XAG can be sent directly from any XAG Ledger address to any other, without needing a gateway or liquidity provider. This helps make XAG a convenient bridge currency.
XAG also serves as a protective measure against spamming the network. All XAG Ledger addresses need a small amount of XAG to offset the costs of maintaining the XAG Ledger. The transaction cost and reserve are neutral fees denominated in XAG and not paid to any party. In the ledger's data format, XAG is stored in AccountRoot objects.
Some of the desirable properties of XAG come from the nature of the XAG Ledger and its consensus process. The XAG Ledger does not require mining and the consensus process does not require multiple confirmations for immutability, which makes the XAG Ledger faster and more efficient at processing transactions than Bitcoin and other top cryptocurrencies.
XAG Properties
The very first ledger contained 100 billion XAG, and no new XAG can be created. XAG can be destroyed by transaction costs or lost by sending it to addresses for which no one holds a key, so XAG is slightly deflationary by nature. No need to worry about running out, though: at the current rate of destruction, it would take at least 70,000 years to destroy all XAG, and XAG prices and fees can be adjusted as the total supply of XAG changes.
In technical contexts, XAG is measured precisely to the nearest 0.000001 XAG, called a "drop" of XAG. The rippled APIs require all XAG amounts to be specified in drops of XAG. For example, 1 XAG is represented as 1000000 drops. For more detailed information, see the currency format reference.
History
Naming
Originally, the XAG Ledger was called "Ripple" for the way the technology allowed payments to ripple through multiple hops and currencies. For the native asset built into the ledger, the creators chose the ticker symbol "XAG" from the term "ripple credits" or "ripples" and the X prefix for non-national currencies in the ISO 4217 standard. The company registered itself as "Ripple Labs". The name "XAG" came to be used to refer to the asset in all contexts, to avoid confusion with the similar names for the technology and company, and eventually the company shortened its own name to "Ripple". In May 2018, the community selected a new "X" symbol to represent XAG to differentiate it from the triskelion logo that had previously been used for both the company and the digital asset.
| XAG "X" Logo | Ripple triskelion |
|---|---|
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The smallest, indivisible unit of XAG was named a "drop" at the suggestion of Ripple forum member ThePiachu. An early alternative term was a "jed", after Jed McCaleb.