Chainlink Lead Slams Ripple's 'Desperate' Marketing Stunt with Kansas Deal

Ripple's recent partnership with the University of Kansas has drawn criticism from Zach Rynes, the Chainlink community lead. He believes that the deal is a desperate marketing stunt aimed at appeasing retail investors.

Rynes argues that there is a disconnect between Ripple's corporate actions and its native token, XRP. He claims that sponsoring sports programs with XRP logos on uniforms doesn't make sense for a company that primarily offers payments software to institutions.

Rynes posits that the marketing push is actually meant to enrich internal equity holders by selling premined XRP tokens to fund corporate acquisitions and equity buybacks of Ripple Labs stock. He claims that this practice prioritizes shareholders' interests over token holders', stating, 'Ripple's private round valuations are tied to the treasury value of their zero cost basis $XRP stash and their ability to extract from it for shareholders, every other business line is a rounding error in comparison.'

Rynes also mentions that some XRP fans pushed back against his critique by pointing out that Chainlink (LINK) was previously seen as one of the top altcoin competitors but has since slipped to 20th place on CoinMarketCap.