Schwartz will join RippleX Senior Director of Engineering Ayo Akinyele for “Building What’s Next for XRPL” on Oct. 28 at 4:30 p.m. ET in New York. Ripple says the discussion will cover privacy, scalability and institutional-grade infrastructure as XRPL moves beyond its original payments focus.
The timing is notable. XRPL is already moving through one of its busiest upgrade periods of 2026, with new protocol features spanning atomic transactions, delegated account permissions, confidential transfers and institutional lending.
Privacy Is Moving Into the XRPL Protocol
One of the clearest themes is confidential finance.
XRPL version 3.3.0 introduced the ConfidentialTransfer amendment, designed to hide Multi-Purpose Token balances and transfer amounts using zero-knowledge proofs and EC-ElGamal encryption. Authorized parties can still verify supply and meet regulatory obligations, giving institutions privacy without eliminating auditability.
That builds directly on Ripple’s recent privacy push, which argues that public blockchains need selective confidentiality before banks can move sensitive financial activity onchain.
Akinyele is particularly relevant to that effort: Ripple describes him as a cryptographer focused on privacy, scale and institutional infrastructure.
AI Agents Could Become XRPL Users
AI is another increasingly concrete part of the roadmap.
Ripple launched its XRPL AI Starter Kit in June, including X402-powered payments using XRP and RLUSD. The system is designed so autonomous agents can pay for APIs, computing resources and other digital services without requiring a human to approve every transaction.
That creates a very different potential payment market for XRP: software paying other software.
XRPL Is Becoming More Programmable
The network is also adding infrastructure for more complex financial workflows.
The latest XRPL upgrades include BatchV1_1, which can combine up to eight transactions into one batch, and PermissionDelegationV1_1, which enables accounts to grant limited authority without sharing master keys.
Institutional DeFi is expanding alongside those changes. Ripple’s roadmap combines Permissioned Domains, credentials, lending and confidential transfers to support regulated onchain markets.
Coinpaper has also reported the network’s lending push, which would bring protocol-native credit directly onto XRPL.
