Key People

The founders and key figures associated with the creation of the XRP Ledger and the Ripple company.

David Schwartz

Co-creator of the XRP Ledger and one of its earliest and most consistent technical stewards. Schwartz has served as Ripple's Chief Technology Officer and remains one of the most active and visible voices explaining the protocol's design decisions to the public, using the handle "JoelKatz" in many older forum and technical discussions.

Jed McCaleb

Co-creator of the XRP Ledger. McCaleb is a serial protocol founder — before working on the XRPL, he created the eDonkey2000 file-sharing network and Mt. Gox (which he sold before its later, unrelated collapse under different ownership). He left Ripple in 2014 following disagreements over the company's direction and went on to co-found Stellar, a separate payments-oriented blockchain that shares some architectural DNA with the XRPL. His departure included a settlement agreement with Ripple that limited the rate at which he could sell his remaining XRP holdings over time.

Arthur Britto

The third co-creator of the XRP Ledger. Britto has kept a comparatively low public profile compared to Schwartz and McCaleb, but is credited as a core architect of the original ledger design.

Chris Larsen

Co-founder of OpenCoin/Ripple Labs alongside the XRPL's creators. Larsen served as Ripple's CEO in the company's early years and later as Executive Chairman. He was individually named, along with Ripple and Brad Garlinghouse, in the SEC's 2020 lawsuit. Larsen holds a large personal XRP position separate from Ripple's corporate holdings.

Brad Garlinghouse

Ripple's CEO since 2017 (having joined the company in 2015 as President and COO). Garlinghouse has been the company's primary public spokesperson through its major growth phase and through the SEC litigation, in which he was also personally named as a defendant.

Ryan Fugger

Creator of the original 2004 RipplePay system, the conceptual precursor from which the "Ripple" name was later adopted for OpenCoin's rebrand in 2013. Fugger is not associated with the XRP Ledger's technical design, which was built independently by Schwartz, McCaleb, and Britto. See Origins and Founding for how these threads connect.