- Ripple chief technology officer David Schwartz is stepping down.
- He will continue as the firm's CTO emeritus.
- Dennis Jarosch, Ripple’s vice president of engineering, will take over as CTO.
David Schwartz, Ripple’s chief technology officer, announced on Tuesday that he will step down from his executive role at the firm at the end of the year.
Schwartz, who has spent more than 13 years at Ripple, was one of three engineers who architected the XRP Ledger, which Ripple leverages.
“The time has come for me to step back from my day-to-day duties as Ripple CTO,” Schwartz said in an X post, announcing the news. “But be warned, I’m not going away from the XRP community.”
The Ripple CTO didn’t provide a reason for the move, but said he’s excited about spending more time with his family and dedicating more time to coding.
He also said he will continue to play a role at the firm as CTO Emeritus, and has accepted an offer from Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen to join the firm’s board of directors.
Dennis Jarosch, Ripple’s vice president of engineering, will take over from Schwartz as CTO next year.
Ripple did not respond to a request for comment.
Critical time
Schwartz joined Ripple in 2011 as a cryptographer, and was promoted to CTO in 2018.
He plays an active role in the community that surrounds the XRP token, and helped guide Ripple through several key upgrades to the XRP Ledger, including the launch of a native automated market maker, the introduction of programmable tokens, and transaction cost reductions.
His departure comes at a critical time for Ripple.
The firm leverages the XRP Ledger blockchain and its native cryptocurrency XRP to facilitate cross-border payments.
In recent months, several other firms have inked partnerships and launched their own infrastructure in a bid to compete in this sector.
In September, Tether sister company Bitfinex launched Plasma, a new blockchain which offers users zero-free transactions for the USDT stablecoin.
Swift, the global payments network, along with several banks, are working with Ethereum layer 2 network Linea, The Big Whale, a blockchain research firm, reported on Friday. The firms plan to use the network to experiment with migrating their payments messaging systems onchain.
Stripe, the online payments giant, is also working with crypto investment firm Paradigm to launch Tempo, a new blockchain designed for payments.
“We’ve been seeing more and more players in the payments and stablecoins space launch their own blockchains,” Schwartz said in an August X post.
“To me, that’s a clear sign the market sees blockchain as core financial infrastructure — something we’ve believed in and have been building toward on the XRP Ledger for over 13 years.”
Tim Craig is DL News’ Edinburgh-based DeFi Correspondent. Reach out with tips at tim@dlnews.com.
