A 2012 agreement signed by Ripple co-founders Chris Larsen, Jed McCaleb, and Arthur Britto has become the focus of a new XRP theory involving Ripple’s $1.2 billion acquisition of Hidden Road.
Crypto enthusiast Echo X shared the historical document on X and connected its provisions to Britto’s role in developing the Ripple protocol, while also raising questions about whether his involvement could extend to projects associated with Ripple years later.
🚨 HISTORICAL DOCUMENT LEAKED 🚨
Signed on Sept 17, 2012, this agreement between Chris Larsen, Jed McCaleb, and Arthur Britto confirms that Britto received 2% of ALL XRP (then called "Ripple Credits") and more importantly, it gave him lifetime rights to build on the Ripple… pic.twitter.com/lyZfZNJqPw
— Echo 𝕏 (@echodatruth) June 3, 2025
2012 Agreement Allocated Britto 2% of Ripple Credits
The document, dated September 17, 2012, identifies Larsen, McCaleb, and Britto as the founders who developed a distributed open-source software platform for payments and virtual currency called “Ripple.”
Under the agreement, the founders agreed that 80% of all Ripple Credits would be allocated to the company. A second section states that Britto would receive 2% of all Ripple Credits recorded on the official ledger.
The agreement also anticipated that the official ledger would contain 100 billion credits. It further provided that if the ledger were revised or another ledger created within 36 months with a lower percentage allocated to Britto, he would have the right to acquire additional credits at no cost to bring his grant back to 2% of the total.
The document also addressed Britto’s intellectual property rights. It states that Britto would consent to open-source his contribution to the Ripple platform at the same time as the other founders. In exchange for assigning his intellectual property rights in Ripple to the company, Britto received a lifetime, fully paid license to develop applications or new functionalities on the Ripple platform.
Echo X Connects Britto’s Rights to Hidden Road
Echo X focused on the agreement’s lifetime development rights. The crypto enthusiast described Britto as the “silent founder” and suggested that the document gave him freedom to build on the Ripple protocol without needing permission.
From there, Echo X speculated a connection to Hidden Road, the institutional brokerage platform Ripple acquired for $1.2 billion. Echo X questioned whether Britto could have secretly contributed to Hidden Road development as a potential infrastructure link into RippleNet.
The post also referenced the address associated with Hidden Road, 589 Fifth Ave., and connected it to clues from the Fuzzy Bear project. Echo X suggested that these details could form part of a broader connection between Britto, Hidden Road, and XRP.
However, the document itself does not mention Hidden Road, RippleNet, Fuzzy Bear, or any later project. Echo X presented those connections as questions and theories rather than established facts.
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David Schwartz Comments on the Agreement
Ripple’s former CTO David Schwartz also commented on the document, focusing on the final sentence of Section 3.
Schwartz wrote, “The last sentence of Section 3 always puzzled me. I can’t imagine what anyone thought he would need a license to do.”
His comment specifically addresses the provision granting Britto a lifetime license to develop applications or new functionalities on the Ripple platform. The remark adds historical context to a clause Echo X considers significant in its theory about Britto’s building within the Ripple ecosystem.
For now, the agreement provides documented evidence of Britto’s 2% allocation and lifetime development rights. The proposed connection between those rights and Hidden Road remains an unverified theory presented by Echo X.
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