Ripple CTO David Schwartz to Step Back, Joins Board

Ripple’s longtime chief technology officer David Schwartz said Tuesday he will step back from daily responsibilities after more than a decade at the company, moving into a board role as “CTO emeritus.”

Schwartz, one of the original architects of the XRP Ledger, announced the transition in a X post. He said the decision will allow him to spend more time with family while staying active in the XRP community.

“I’m not going away from the XRP community. You haven’t seen the last of me (now, or ever),” he posted. “The last few months I’ve been tinkering on the side – spinning up my own XRPL node and publishing its output data, researching other use cases for XRP (besides what Ripple is focused on), and more.”“I truly enjoy this part — getting my hands dirty, talking to builders, coding for the pure love of it — and I’m really excited to get back to that. More to come on this very soon, I’m sure

Schwartz joined Ripple in 2011 as a cryptographer, helping design the ledger that underpins XRP transactions. He was promoted to CTO in 2018 and has since become one of the most recognizable voices in the XRP community, defending the ledger’s role against critics and guiding its evolution through regulatory battles and technical upgrades.

The leadership shuffle comes as Ripple positions RLUSD, its stablecoin, deeper into tokenized treasury markets and expands the XRP Ledger’s use cases beyond payments.

XRP was last trading at $2.84, down 1.7% in the past 24 hours.