Ripple's Chief Technology Officer David Schwartz returns to XRPL infrastructure not as a Ripple executive, but as an independent operator. In a personal update posted on August 2nd, Schwartz revealed that he has built and launched a custom server designed to support the XRP ledger network.
The setup is impressive: AMD 9950X processor, 256 GB of RAM, multiple terabytes of SSD and NVME storage, and 10 Gbps unconfirmed links – all housed in a data center in New York. I'm running Ubuntu and already fully synced with XRP ledger.
However, Schwartz emphasized that this is not a testbed or playground. Rather, it aims to act as a high-time, stable production server and can serve as a hub for validators, other infrastructure nodes, and XRPL applications.
Update: The hardware is working and syncing live with XRPL. A few weeks of hardening and combat testing will be required before you are ready to actually provide the important nodes. But in reality, it currently offers some additional connections.
– David 'Joelkatz' Schwartz (@Joelkatz) August 3, 2025
Some slots on the server are reserved for “critical” nodes. The goal is to provide real connectivity rather than experimenting. No destructive testing is planned unless there is a strong technical reason.
As always, XRP is decentralized
He hasn't run the XRPL infrastructure directly in years, but Schwartz said the current state of the network makes this kind of distributed hub more convenient than ever.
He also said that while it should not rely on a single node of critical services, the data collected from this setup will help improve the network's understanding of how traffic behaves across different workloads.
The server is now online, but Schwartz says it will require several more weeks of “fighting hardening” before carrying the actual weight. Nevertheless, it already contributes to additional connectivity to the XRPL ecosystem.
