$XRP Ledger Foundation (XRPLF) officially completed the formation of its operational core, unveiling a team that will define the technical direction of XRPL in the coming years. Instead of bringing in outside top executives, the foundation placed its bet on code veterans and specialists with experience inside banking institutions.
The main message behind this update is XRPLF’s final transition toward full autonomy. While $XRP development was previously associated almost exclusively with Ripple, the foundation’s current lineup emphasizes that the protocol is now being guided by people who grew within the community itself and have direct influence over the code.
Who is running the XRPL Foundation now
The central figure of the new strategy is former XRPL Labs executive Denis Angell, who has taken over the CTO position. The appointment is designed to concentrate the development of key amendments under the control of the ecosystem’s most active code contributor in order to ensure the network’s technical sovereignty and eliminate any “corporate bias” in architectural decision-making.
Operational resilience and the connection to global finance will be overseen by René Heijsen, whose experience at the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) is considered a critical skill in 2025, when compatibility between blockchain protocols and banking standards has effectively become a regulatory requirement.
To strengthen ties with the infrastructure side of the ecosystem, Hussein Zangana, known online as ‘Vet_X0’, has joined the leadership team. As someone who spent years operating nodes and building projects such as $XRP Cafe, he is expected to transform community relations from a PR-focused function into direct technical support for validators and developers.
Big life update.
I’m joining the new $XRP Ledger Foundation leadership team as a Director, Community.
Very excited to accelerate the $XRP ecosystem with very powerful team members on my side.
There is a lot in flight and the timing is perfect.
Back to the roots! https://t.co/HHoYxRuV9b
— Vet (@Vet_X0) May 8, 2026
Overall leadership, meanwhile, remains under executive director Brett Mullen, with the team planning to synchronize engineering progress with actual market demand while moving away from releasing upgrades for the sake of upgrades alone.
In 2025, XRPLF is not trying to “sell” $XRP as an asset – it is strengthening XRPL as a technology. The focus has shifted toward throughput and standards, while the team is promoting a “Back to the roots” principle: a return to open-source development where the final word belongs to those who write the code and run the nodes.
Whether they can avoid the bureaucratic swamp that has slowed down organizations like Ethereum Foundation, or whether increasing institutionalization will simply make development slower, remains to be seen. For now, however, this looks like a bid for the kind of stability the industry has been critically lacking.
