RippleX engineers have opened a new discussion around one of the most controversial potential upgrades in the XRP Ledger’s history: native XRP staking. While the XRPL has never supported staking due to its unique consensus model, recent engineering research has pushed the idea into serious consideration and sparked wide debate among Ripple’s leadership, including CTO David Schwartz.
XRPL’s Architecture Was Not Built for Staking, But That May Change
The XRP Ledger, launched in 2012, operates on a Proof-of-Association consensus mechanism that finalizes transactions in a matter of seconds without the financial incentives used by Proof-of-Stake networks. Its design prioritizes speed, reliability, and low fees rather than yield-driven validation. Because of this, the XRPL has no native staking, no validator rewards, and no token-locking mechanism.
That foundation is now being re-examined. The conversation began when RippleX engineering head J. Ayo Akinyele published a deep technical analysis exploring whether staking could be introduced without undermining the ledger’s core properties.
1/6 XRP has always been about moving value quickly and efficiently. Over the years, it has gone from powering payments to helping settle tokenized assets and enabling real-time liquidity across different markets.
He noted that XRP’s role has expanded significantly, from powering instant payments to enabling tokenized asset settlement and real-time liquidity. The arrival of the first U.S. spot XRP ETF marks a new stage of institutional integration. In that context, native staking has emerged as a future possibility worth analyzing.
The Key Technical Problem: Where Would XRP Staking Rewards Come From?
Akinyele stressed that the XRPL currently burns transaction fees, which means there is no automatic source of yield. Adding staking would therefore require new mechanisms to generate and distribute rewards. One suggestion, offered cautiously, involves redirecting programmable fees toward a staking pool. But such changes would fundamentally alter value flows on a network that has remained deflationary for more than a decade.
He also warned that introducing financial incentives could reshape validator behavior and governance dynamics. Today, validators operate based on reputation and a shared interest in network reliability, not monetary gain. Staking would shift those motivations and could introduce pressure points that do not exist today.
Ripple CTO: Technically Interesting, Politically Explosive
David Schwartz, one of the chief architects of the XRPL, joined the discussion with several conceptual designs, including a two-layer model where an internal validator set relies on stake-based rules. Although he described these designs as “technically promising,” he also emphasized that they are not realistic right now due to the significant risks involved.
Schwartz also addressed a major concern raised by analysts: Ripple itself holds a substantial amount of XRP. Critics argue that native staking could unintentionally increase corporate influence over consensus. Schwartz countered that validators, not Ripple, would choose whose stake they accept, but acknowledged that biases could emerge if validators only select familiar or aligned participants.
Forgive me, I haven't read your proposal. What measures could be implemented to protect against this and validator collusion?
To mitigate centralization risks, Schwartz floated a governance-token model where a separate, “worthless” token would control validator lists through voting. Should governance go rogue, users could trigger a “fork by governance” to reset the system, an option he compared to a nuclear deterrent: powerful but undesirable.
Third-Party ‘Staking’ Isn’t Really Staking and Highlights the Pressure to Evolve
Despite the absence of native staking, various platforms already offer “XRP staking” through lending, liquidity pools, and synthetic yield products. These services operate completely off-chain and do not engage with XRPL’s consensus layer. Akinyele noted that this trend shows growing demand for yield on XRP, even if the XRPL itself remains unchanged. Innovation around utility, he said, does not always require modifying core protocol mechanics.
A Future Possibility, But Not a Near-Term Feature
Ripple’s leadership agrees on one point: native staking is not coming to the XRPL anytime soon. The current discussion is exploratory and heavily focused on potential long-term evolution, not short-term implementation.
Still, the fact that Ripple’s top engineers and executives are openly analyzing staking marks a significant moment for a ledger that has historically avoided the economic incentive systems common in the rest of the crypto ecosystem. With the XRPL’s role growing alongside ETF adoption, tokenization, and DeFi activity, the question is no longer whether staking is possible, but whether the network should take that leap.