Ripple Chief Technology Officer David Schwartz said he will step back from his day-to-day duties at the end of the year after more than 13 years at the company.
The announcement was made in a post on X on Tuesday, where Schwartz described the move as a personal inflection point after four decades in technology.
“The time has come for me to step back from my day-to-day duties as Ripple CTO at the end of this year,” he wrote. “But be warned, I’m not going away from the XRP community. You haven’t seen the last of me—now or ever.”
After consulting for the NSA, Schwartz began working on the XRP Ledger in 2011 with Arthur Britto, Jed McCaleb, and Chris Larsen. Calling his time with Ripple “a wild ride,” Schwartz said he looks forward to spending more time with his family and returning to his hobbies.
“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,” he said.
After stepping back from Ripple’s daily operations, Schwartz said he will take on a CTO emeritus role and join Ripple’s board of directors.
Schwartz did not respond to requests for comment by Decrypt.
In an August interview with Decrypt, Schwartz highlighted what he sees as the ledger’s strongest tailwinds: tokenization of real-world assets, institutional stablecoin adoption, and curated on-chain features designed for enterprises.
“There will be use cases where digital assets like XRP and Bitcoin make sense—where volatility is either an advantage or not a disadvantage—and other cases where a more stable token like RLUSD or another stablecoin will make more sense,” Schwartz said. “You’ll see enterprise use cases in everything from trade finance to tokenized real-world assets.”
Schwartz also addressed misconceptions that have dogged XRP over the years.
“By far, the biggest misconception is that Ripple somehow controls the ledger,” he explained. “The XRP Ledger has been running since 2012 with a global set of validators, most of them not affiliated with Ripple at all.”
In his farewell, Schwartz also praised Ripple President Monica Long, Executive Chairman Chris Larsen, SVP of Engineering Dennis Jarosch, and the wider XRP community.
“I have total confidence in the next generation of leaders and builders, including Dennis Jarosch, Ripple’s senior vice president of engineering, and far too many others to name in the XRP community who will carry the torch,” he said.
