Ripple CTO Makes Sudden XRP Comeback on His Own Terms

Ripple’s Chief Technology Officer David Schwartz is returning to XRPL infrastructure — not as a Ripple executive but as an independent operator. In a personal update posted on Aug. 2, Schwartz revealed that he has built and launched a custom server designed to support the XRP Ledger network, with no official ties to the company beyond his day job.

The setup is impressive: an AMD 9950X processor, 256 GB of RAM, multiple terabytes of SSD and NVMe storage, and a 10 Gbps unmetered link — all housed in a New York data center. It runs Ubuntu and is already fully synced with XRP Ledger.

However, Schwartz emphasised that this is not a testbed or playground; rather, it is intended to function as a high-uptime, stable production server, capable of acting as a hub for validators, other infrastructure nodes and XRPL applications.

Update: The hardware is operational and is live on XRPL and synchronized. It’s going to take a few weeks of hardening and battle testing before it will be ready to actually serve important nodes. But it is actually providing some additional connectivity right now.

— David ‘JoelKatz’ Schwartz (@JoelKatz) August 3, 2025

Some slots on the server will be reserved for “important” nodes, likely UNL validators or other priority services, while additional space will be made available to the public depending on availability. The goal is to provide real connectivity, not to conduct experiments. No disruptive testing is planned unless there is a strong technical reason for it.

XRP as decentralized as ever

Although he has not directly run XRPL infrastructure for years, Schwartz said that the current state of the network makes this kind of decentralized hub more useful than ever.

He also noted that no one should depend on a single node for critical services, but that the data collected from this setup could help to improve the network’s understanding of how traffic behaves across different workloads.

The server is online now, though Schwartz says it will need a few more weeks of “battle hardening” before it is ready to carry real weight. Nevertheless, it is already contributing additional connectivity to the XRPL ecosystem.

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