Ripple Labs Lead Engineer Is Set To Leave The Firm

- Ripple Labs lead engineer Nik Bougalis has been with the firm for nearly a decade.
- The engineer is set to leave the firm in some weeks.

Ripple Labs’ director of engineering, Nik Bougalis worked on open-source code projects for the payments focused on the XRP Ledger, with the recent push to introduce NFTs being a key implementation of note. He is set to leave the firm after nearly ten years. He is the latest of top long-time serving executives to leave the crypto space. In a tweet he was quoted saying:

“All good things…”

My decade-long journey at @Ripple has been a fantastic (if exhausting and all-consuming) one.

I got to work on a project that I love, towards a goal I believe in.

But that journey will be coming to an end in a few weeks.

— 𝙽 𝙸 𝙺 𝙱 (@nbougalis) October 21, 2022

The Ripple engineer stated that he will not be joining any blockchain company or project. The engineer has a long background in software engineering and also in the crypto realm. While at ripple he worked on open-source code projects and payments for the XRP ledger (XRPL).

Ripple’s recent big development which was being overseen by Bougalis is the XLS-20 amendment which will see the introduction of nonfungible tokens (NFTs) to XRPL. Its upgrade is set to go through on early November since there were some bugs that needed to be ironed out.

The engineer poured out his thoughts and said that Ripple will be just fine without him.

Its long-term health and success isn’t predicated on any one person. I’m confident that it will be just fine, thanks to talented and passionate individuals who contribute and participate, each in their own way.

This month the blockchain sector has seen many executives step away from their companies, an example is Brian Roberts, chief financial officer of NFT market place OpenSea, who revealed on 7th October that he is exiting the firm. On October 21, Gavin Wood, Polkadot co-founder, also exited from blockchain infrastructure company Parity Technologies, saying that it was not a position where he saw himself finding “eternal happiness.”

Other top figures that followed suit were Kraken CEO Jesse Powell, FTX US president Brett Harrison, Genesis Trading CEO Michael Moro and MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor.

Recently ripple scored a notable win with its long running legal battle with US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) over alleged securities violations with XRP. Ripple general counsel, Stuart Alderoty revealed on October 21, that the firm finally got their hands on important documents that could significantly strengthen its defense against SEC.

The documents at issue relate to a speech made in 2018 by former SEC division director William Hinman regarding to the regulatory status of Ether (ETH), which the government has fought long and hard to keep under wraps during the legal dispute.