On Monday, the XRP Ledger Foundation announced the appointment of David Schwartz, the former Chief Technology Officer of Ripple and one of the original architects of the XRP Ledger, as an Honorary Board Member. This move is seen as a significant step toward strengthening technical governance and ecosystem coordination as XRPL expands into decentralized finance (DeFi), tokenized assets, and institutional services.
Schwartz, who helped design the XRPL codebase alongside Arthur Britto and Jed McCaleb in 2011, brings decades of experience in applied cryptography, distributed systems, and payment-focused blockchain architecture. The foundation stated that his “deep technical insight and long-term perspective” will support its stewardship of the network, which includes maintaining core repositories, managing validator infrastructure, and supporting developers building on XRPL.
Operating independently from Ripple, the XRP Ledger Foundation has been actively fostering the growth of the XRPL ecosystem. Schwartz’s honorary role will involve providing technical guidance rather than direct operational control. His appointment comes as the network adopts automated market makers, smart contract features, and interoperability tools to compete in institutional settlement and real-world asset tokenization.
In related disclosures, Schwartz revealed he had reduced most of his direct crypto holdings—selling a majority of his once-held 26 million XRP (now holding over 1 million XRP), along with significant reductions in Bitcoin (from ~1,000 BTC to less than 1 BTC) and Ether (from ~4,000 ETH to less than 2 ETH). He emphasized that personal risk management drove the decisions, not a bearish outlook on crypto.
