Ripple’s CTO Has a Mind-Blowing Revelation About XRPL and DeFi!

by

In a moment of rare clarity, Ripple CTO David Schwartz recently admitted that his views on XRPL have evolved. And no, this isn’t a result of a midlife crisis, just a natural progression as the blockchain world has gone through more transformations than a transformer on a caffeine binge since 2012.

Schwartz, who clearly spends his days pondering governance and consensus, has found himself at a crossroads of thinking. As new use cases and technologies pop up like unwanted pop-up ads, his perspective has naturally shifted. His latest epiphany? Maybe, just maybe, XRPL could actually support DeFi natively. Yes, you read that correctly. No more relying on those pesky external protocols that everyone pretends they don’t secretly despise.

“With programmability initiatives and smart contract discussions underway, it seemed like a good time for us to also discuss what other DeFi capabilities natively could look like,” Schwartz said, possibly while sipping an espresso and contemplating the universe’s existential mysteries.

Core philosophy of XRPL

Now, Schwartz has always maintained that XRPL is a different beast from those other PoS chains. Validators? They’re all supposed to be equal, which sounds nice, doesn’t it? It’s all about stability and trust, not about who’s got the flashiest collection of tokens. No need for a blockchain version of a high school popularity contest.

And those transaction fees? Forget about them being used for staking rewards. In Schwartz’s world, they’re supposed to be burned-like the last shred of hope after a 3-day crypto crash.

The ledger, in Schwartz’s opinion, is like a Formula 1 car: optimized for speed, low cost, and secure settlements. It’s not meant to dawdle around. So the real question becomes: how do you introduce DeFi functionality without turning the blockchain into a sluggish, bloated mess?

The Two-Layer Consensus Idea

Enter Schwartz’s dazzling brainchild: the two-layer consensus model. A stroke of genius-or possibly just a lot of late nights-he envisions XRPL’s responsibilities being split into two neat little piles. The outer layer would deal with the usual governance, amendments, fees, and the occasional internet troll.

The inner layer? Well, it’s the star of the show. It’s incentivized, handles the frequent ledger advancements, and maybe even tosses in a little staking/slashing for fun. This would allow XRPL to remain the sleek, fast payment machine it was always meant to be while opening up space for more validator diversity (without making the network grind to a halt). Brilliant, right?

And according to Schwartz, this is a much more elegant solution than turning XRPL into just another PoS chain. Because let’s face it, who really wants to do that?

The ZK Proof Idea

As if this wasn’t enough innovation for one day, Schwartz also had another idea-using transaction fees to pay for zero-knowledge proofs of smart contract execution. Why? Well, it would allow XRPL to execute complex on-chain operations without burdening every node with the computational weight of a thousand suns.

In other words, it would enable programmability and DeFi functionality without making the whole network slower than a snail on vacation. Pretty neat, huh?

Read More

2025-11-18 23:46