Ripple CTO David Schwartz recently took part in an X discussion, which was not based on cryptocurrencies per se, but on a topic with a likely slant: the internet.
Schools of thought call Web3 the next iteration of the internet, albeit decentralized, with blockchain being the main technology behind it.
The discussion started when Nikita Bier, head of product at
The tweet caught the attention of the Ripple CTO, who shared his earliest memory of the Internet of “editing DOS boot files to load a package driver, configuring SLIP on SLS Linux (on 14 floppies), and memorizing bang paths.”
Edit DOS boot files to load a package driver, configure SLIP on SLS Linux (on 14 floppies), and memorize bang paths. https://t.co/0bnQEgWvRO
— David ‘JoelKatz’ Schwartz (@JoelKatz) October 12, 2025
This knowledge of the internet is what Ripple’s CTO built on and created XRP in 2012, although work on XRP Ledger began in 2011.
In June 2012, David Schwartz, Jed McCaleb and Arthur Britto launched a distributed ledger that improved on these fundamental limitations of Bitcoin, XRP Ledger, with its own cryptocurrency XRP.
Internet of value
Cryptocurrency and blockchain are transforming the exchange of value, just as the Internet did for the exchange of information, and the journey is expected to be much the same. The cryptocurrency movement emerged from the ashes of the 2008 financial crisis with the belief that the financial system could be improved so that everyone would benefit.
Cryptocurrency use cases vary globally, with more use cases possible with emerging Web3 technologies.
In this light, XRP Ledger’s updated institutional DeFi roadmap prepares for what lies ahead in the coming months. This focuses on two themes shaping the next phase of XRPL’s institutional DeFi evolution: the launch of a native lending protocol and the integration of zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) for privacy with accountability.