The XRP community is tracking two major October dates as Ripple prepares for its annual Swell conference and the XRP Ledger approaches a protocol amendment activation.
Swell 2026 will take place in New York from October 27 to 29, 2026. For the first time, Ripple is combining Swell with Apex, the developer and investor summit for the XRP Ledger, and UBRI Connect, the academic conference tied to Ripple’s University Blockchain Research Initiative.
The agenda covers liquidity and settlement, tokenization of real-world assets, bank-grade stablecoins, the first year of spot XRP ETFs, AI agents that move money, and post-quantum security. Ripple CTO Emeritus David Schwartz and RippleX Senior Director of Engineering Ayo Akinyele are expected to discuss next steps for the XRP Ledger.
Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse will hold a fireside chat on digital asset evolution. He will also moderate discussions with Bullish Chairman and CEO Tom Farley on digital asset markets, and with actor and Water.org co-founder Matt Damon and Gary White on expanding financial access.
On the technical side, the fixCleanup3_4_0 amendment is scheduled to go live on the XRPL mainnet on October 23, 2026. The upgrade includes fixes for Single Asset Vaults, the Lending Protocol, Automated Market Makers, the permissioned DEX, trust lines, NFTs, MPTs, Escrow, Sponsorship, transaction signing, and permission delegation. It is especially important for Permission Delegation because users cannot delegate the PaymentBurn granular permission until it is enabled. Activation requires validator support to remain above 80%.
