Key takeaways:

• Luke Judges states that technical strength alone cannot guarantee long-term competitiveness, suggesting that XRP could benefit from Solana’s pragmatism and speed of execution.

• The judges believe that Solana’s market popularity is due to practical engineering and a quick-to-market strategy, rather than the protocol design itself.

• David Schwartz takes the opposite position, arguing that the reliability and stability of XRPL are more valuable than pursuing high-capacity chains.

• The judges emphasize that incentives to deploy developers, tools and validators are key to maintaining growth and mitigating the risk of centralization.

Luke Judges, Director of Global Partner Success and Director of Ripple, shared insights on the evolving XRP Ledger ecosystem and its competitive landscape, highlighting a clear parallel to the operational successes of rival Layer 1 network Solana. Drawing on their previous experience with the Solana network in managing a significant validator, the judges suggested that technical advantage alone would not be enough to ensure the network’s long-term relevance.

In this article, we analyze Ripple executives’ insights on operational proposals, focusing on technical advancements within the XRP Ledger (XRPL) and strategic requirements for Layer 1 competitiveness.

Operational lessons from Solana’s manual

The judges’ perspective is unique and is based on his experience running two startups and running validator Solana, which has managed over $30 million in staked tokens over a full market cycle. He common this detail on November 30, 2025 on X, noting that it witnessed the main price peak of the network, as well as its subsequent decline and recovery.

This practical knowledge led judges to conclude that the success of a Tier 1 network in the competitive cycle often depends on factors other than the underlying technology. In particular, he credited Solana with “pragmatism and speed,” which he believes are necessary to ensure developer ideas are shared and encourage adoption.

The basic idea is that speed of execution and a practical approach to engineering and go-to-market can trump theoretical leadership in the race to develop the ecosystem.

Nevertheless, Judges suggests that other networks may take notice of how Solana runs its network, arguing that “there’s no point in sticking your head in the sand pretending you’re the only network in town.” In the case of XRPL, these observations highlight potential vulnerabilities, suggesting that technical milestones need to be combined with a proactive go-to-market (GTM) strategy to translate into true competitive advantage.

Technical developments on the XRP ledger

The call for strategic acceleration comes as XRPL actively pursues significant technical expansion, including the launch of XRP Ledger clever contracts on AlphaNet. Historically optimized for speedy and affordable cross-border payments via a federated consensus mechanism, XRPL is now focused on increasing its programmability and usability in the decentralized finance (DeFi) space.

Contrary to the judges’ view, David Schwartz, Ripple’s chief technology officer and original architect of the XRP Ledger, he emphasized that the XRP design philosophy focuses on institutional-level reliability, efficiency, and performance. He argued that this makes the network inherently better than high-capacity networks like Solana without having to change its core strategy.

Schwartz criticizes blockchains like Solana for prioritizing pure speed over stability, pointing to the network’s history of outages as evidence that such an approach is not suitable for real-world financial applications.

In Schwartz’s case, the XRPL consensus mechanism ensures consistent transaction finality and near-zero fees, ensuring excellent uptime and predictability. He argues that this is a key competitive advantage that should be prioritized, rather than a reflection of the structure of the ecosystem, which Judges praises for its “pragmatism and speed.”

Developer and ecosystem considerations

A key element of the judges’ assessment is developer experience and ecosystem support. Providing effective development tools, clear documentation, and structured deployment processes can encourage developers to deploy applications and interact with the network.

The judges’ commentary highlighted the fundamental challenges of maintaining a resilient Layer 1 network, in particular the need for resilient and sustainable validator economics. While acknowledging Solana’s success in attracting construction investors, he also noted that the network faces the challenge that “the number of validators is declining rapidly,” raising long-term concerns about decentralization and the sustainability of its incentive model.

In the case of XRPL, this serves as a precautionary warning against creating incentive structures that could lead to similar concentration risks, especially as the network explores indigenous staking concepts.

The debate over the economics of validators highlights the different design philosophies of the two networks. XRPL Consensus is valued for its battle-tested stability, speedy trade completion, and institutional-grade reliability. Its challenge is to develop recent staking mechanisms that augment usability without compromising the core value of predictable reliability, which contrasts with the instability seen on some high-capacity chains.

Did you know? In his post, X Judges notes that the Ethereum Foundation is becoming “much more focused on its GTM,” referring to the shift towards Layer 2 solutions, or rollups. This move directly addressed user complaints about high fees and low speeds on the main chain, issues that Solana was successfully exploiting to attract users.

Market context and strategic execution

The judges’ overall message should not be interpreted as an existential threat to XRPL, but rather as a constructive mandate for strategic adaptation. This reflects a high-level recognition that the competitive landscape rewards execution over theoretical technological advantage.

In practice, the judges find that XRPL’s strategic focus should focus on three areas:

• Improving the developer experience by enabling developers to build on XRPL faster and easier, borrowing Solana’s focus on practical, quick-to-use tools.

• Refine your go-to-market strategy to quickly transform recent technical features, such as clever contracts, into clear, unique and compelling benefits for partners and users.

• Leveraging the reliability in enterprise applications, which is the main advantage of XRPL, while adopting the operational speed and flexibility of competitive networks.

The judges’ statement can be interpreted as a reminder that capturing the next phase of blockchain adoption requires strategic adaptation to ensure that XRPL’s execution matches its technical innovations and established leadership in cross-border financial applications.