XRPL Foundation Focuses on Community Needs: Initial Plans and Collaboration with XRPL Labs and XRPL Commons

• The XRP community’s leading organizations are set to launch an all-new XRP Ledger Foundation to foster long-term growth, security and decentralization.
• The current XRPL Foundation will transition into the new Inclusive Financial Technology Foundation, whose mandate on financial inclusion extends beyond the XRP blockchain ecosystem.

Last week, the XRPL Foundation announced that it would rename itself as the Inclusive Financial Technology Foundation (INFTF), a new organization that seeks to promote decentralized financial services uptake on multiple ledgers besides XRPL. The announcement caused confusion in the community, with some worried that it could lead to centralization, hinder the development of the XRPL ecosystem and break down the trust the community has placed in the organization.

As we reported, Ripple President Monical Long and CTO David Schwartz took to X to clarify that a new organization would be formed to take over the role of the XRPL Foundation and that INFTF would be an entirely different project.

Now, Ripple has made a detailed announcement on the new Foundation, its mandate and why it was necessary to decouple from the previous setup.

Meet the New XRP Ledger Foundation

In its announcement, Ripple revealed that some of the ecosystem’s biggest organizations—including XRPL Commons, XRPL Labs and the current XRPL Foundation—had met with other prominent members and developers in the ecosystem to discuss the way forward. The meeting had come to one consensus: the community needs a new organization to champion the interests of the XRPL community.

Great discussions recently on the evolution of the XRPL Foundation into an entity that centers on collaboration, transparency and serving the broader needs of the XRP Ledger community – sharing initial plans built alongside XRPL Labs, XRPL Commons, the current XRPLF and more…

— RippleX (@RippleXDev) August 10, 2024

The new entity will be known as the XRP Ledger Foundation, a slight deviation from the existing entity’s name. It will be charged with “ongoing stewardship, democratic governance, contributions (both technical and non-technical), community and developer engagement and more.”

According to an accompanying blog post, the new foundation will provide long-term growth and security while promoting the protocol’s decentralization.

For starters, the existing foundation will hand over all its assets to the new entity. This includes the xrpl.org domain, its content and all related assets, the XRP trademarks, the unique node list (vl.xrplf.org), the GitHub repositories and all the communication and social media channels, including YouTube and the blog.

Once the handover is complete, the new entity will embark on operational duties, including formalizing the membership structure and expanding community representation. It will seek to include large ecosystem players, such as research institutions, universities and exchanges, on the board. This board will be more involved in running the entity, including voting on any new participants.

After all the basics are in place, the new entity will expand on aspects such as research and development and issuing grants to developers building on XRPL.

“The aim of these initiatives would be to empower the foundation to support innovation and promote development on the XRPL network, all while maintaining a decentralized approach to governance and operations,” Ripple says.

The XRP token trades at $0.5763, gaining a mere 0.55% in the past day for a $32.33 billion market cap. Over the past week, it has gained over 30%, boosted by its victory against the SEC.