Some news: I’m leaving Ripple. What?! Whoa! Yes, I know it is a bit of a shock, so let me explain. 2021 was a pretty tough year for me personally. I have written previously about it, supporting my wife through some pretty horrific mental health battles, a global pandemic, starting at Ripple during lockdown, moving to Barbados, and my wife developing seizures. It was a rollercoaster of a year.
Ripple has been amazingly supportive through all this time, both on a personal and a professional level. However despite all the support, it has become clear I am spinning too many plates. So I’m going to be stepping down from my role at Ripple to focus on supporting my family and helping my wife recover. This is a hard decision to make, but something I feel is necessary. Don’t worry, I’ll still be involved in the XRP Ledger community, albeit maybe to a lesser degree for a while.
Looking back on the past year, I have had the opportunity to work with some amazing people. Some highlights that I’ve had the privilege to contribute to:
- Launching and hosting the RippleXDev Twitch channel. 47 episodes, over 60 hours of content, and over 13,500 distinct viewers. Highlighting the breadth of the XRP Ledger developer community and what they are building.
- The launch of the XRP Ledger Grants program (w/ Elliot Lee and Julia Heitner). Funding over 50 projects with approx $6M of funding
- The speaker programme of the inaugural Apex develop conference (w/ Saleena Glowik)
- XRPL Hackathons (w/ Saleena Glowik)
- Speaking at the Miami XRPL Community Meetup (organized by Pablo Padillo, Amy Huber and Matt Lindzon)
- Speaking at multiple university events (big shout out to Lauren Weymouth at UBRI!), including: Kansas University Blockchain Institute, Berkeley Blockchain Club, Duke University, University of Sao Paulo, University of Cape Town, Indian Institute of Technology, University of Zurich
- Speaking at a number of tech conferences: We Are Developers World Congress, Singapore Fintech Festival, Techsylvania, Python Web Conference, DevRelCon Tokyo
- Speaking at events for and help advising on, the XRPL Campus Ambassador programme (amazing work by Matt Lindzon, Amy Huber, Andrew Havasy)
- Launching the XRPL Developers Discord channel (now in the hands of Abner Pinto, aka BiasGoose)
- Launching RippleXDev’s presence on Dev.to with technical blog posts on the XRPL
- Speaking at several internal Ripple “lunch and learn” sessions on the XRP Ledger and the wider cryptocurrency world
- Consulting, testing and promotion of the XRPL-py library for the XRP Ledger (thanks Mayukha Vadari, Greg Weisbrod, Jackson Mills!)
- Being the “voice of the developer” for the various Ripple product teams (w/ Danny Gamboa, Jazzi Cooper, Yana Novikova, Amir Mehrbakhsh)
- Giving technical support to the Ripple comms and social teams (w/ Haley Rodriguez, Kiefer Hickman)
- Participating in the Ripple Innovate internal hackathon – go team Dexter! (w/ Danil, Adi, Elliot, Ohn)
- The XRPL “explainer videos”: 10 short videos to explain the XRP Ledger (with Lohren Green, Kristin James, Anthony Cistaro)
- Generally hanging out with the amazing C++ team (David Schwartz, Nik Bougalis, Scott Determan, CJ Cobb, Ed Hennis and co)
- Liaising with the XRP Ledger Foundation (Bharath Chari and Wietse Wind)
- Providing feedback on the XRPL.org website, helping move it over to the XRPLF and working out how to make it even more awesome (w/ Polina Polishchuk, Jess Shen, Rome Reginelli)
- Appearing in a Ripple Drop episode (interviewed by the awesome Reinhard Cate)
- Speaking at a Pride at Ripple ERG event as an LGBTQ+ ally (with the “other” Matts Welch and Curcio!)
- Participating in the Black at Ripple ERG and discussing how DAOs could be used for Employee Resource Groups across companies (with the amazing Nate Rose)
- Participating in the Women at Ripple ERG, especially hosting an International Women’s Day panel on Twitch (Mayukha, Jazzi, Yana, and Haley)
- Sitting on 18 interview panels for hiring new Ripplers
- Representing Ripple at the SXSW 2022 conference in Austin, Texas
I’ve no doubt missed people and events off that list. Every time I’ve looked back at it, I’ve remembered other cool things I’ve had a chance to be a part of and people I’ve worked with – It has been an amazing year. A big thanks to the Ripple Leadership team, especially Monica Long for her leadership of the RippleX business unit.
Onwards!