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In a recent post on X, Ripple Global Partner Success Lead and Director Luke Judges pushes back against the assumption that being part of the Ripple team means he now hates Solana.
Judges pointed out a fact that remains unknown to the newer crowd in the XRP community: Before joining Ripple, he built two startups in the Solana ecosystem and ran a validator with more than $30 million staked. He also witnessed Solana’s bull and bear cycle, which saw it fall from $200 to $8 and then climb back up, indicating his deep roots in the Solana ecosystem.
While this might seem significant, the Ripple lead reveals Solana remains far from perfect, with its validator count dropping rapidly at the moment. Still, Judges believes XRP and every other Layer 1 can learn from Solana’s pragmatism and speed.
Judges noted that Ethereum through the Ethereum Foundation has tightened its go-to-market (GTM) focus, having lost “some lunch” due to the Solana advantage.
The Ripple executive added that XRP does not have to exist in a vacuum, as it could learn from other chains and maintain competitive advantage.
The comments of the Ripple official come at a crucial time when XRP is exploring smart contracts and native staking.
XRP seems to be realigning its focus in wake of the recent demand in the market, especially as its first set of ETFs arrives in the U.S.
In this light, Ripple CTO and one of the original architects of XRP Ledger David Schwartz noted that his thoughts on governance and consensus models have evolved. Schwartz revealed earlier this month that he had been mulling over how XRP is used in DeFi (both organically with apps and protocols like Flare, MoreMarkets, Axelar, Doppler) and natively on-chain. With programmability initiatives and smart contract discussions underway, the Ripple CTO pointed out that the timing might be appropriate enough to begin discussions on additional native DeFi capabilities for XRP Ledger.
Weeks back, XRP reached a major smart contract milestone with the launch of XRP Ledger Smart Contracts feature on AlphaNet, a dedicated development network.
