'An Incredible Year Ahead': Ripple Engineer Outlines What's Coming to XRPL

Cover image via U.Today Disclaimer: The opinions expressed by our writers are their own and do not represent the views of U.Today. The financial and market information provided on U.Today is intended for informational purposes only. U.Today is not liable for any financial losses incurred while trading cryptocurrencies. Conduct your own research by contacting financial experts before making any investment decisions. We believe that all content is accurate as of the date of publication, but certain offers mentioned may no longer be available. Read U.TODAY on Google News In a recent tweet, RippleX head of engineering, J. Ayo Akinyele, shares expectations for the year 2026. Advertisement According to Akinyele , 2026 is set to be an incredible year with key features including privacy, programmability, interoperability via zero knowledge proofs and DeFi (on-chain lending) coming to XRP Ledger. Akinyele adds that formal verification and a more modular XRPL implementation are also coming to the network. HOT Stories Bitcoin (BTC) Price Prediction 2026 Coinbase's Armstrong Unveils Top 3 Priorities for 2026 XRP Price Prediction 2026 Canadian Billionaire Predicts Bitcoin Could Trade 'a Lot Lower' If This Happens Happy New Year, everyone! 🎉 Grateful for all the builders, validators, and the community pushing the XRP ledger forward. @RippleXDev @Ripple 2026 is going to be an incredible year — privacy, programmability, interop via ZK, and DeFi (i.e, on-chain lending) are coming. Not to… — J. Ayo Akinyele (@ja_akinyele) January 1, 2026 The expectations for 2026 build on the foundation that was laid through various upgrades and amendments in 2025. Advertisement XRPL v3.0.0 was released in December, which adds new amendments, including the lending protocol, which is nearly code-complete but not yet open for voting. The amendments for the XRP lending protocol are expected to enter validator voting in late January, marking a major step toward activating protocol-native credit markets on XRPL. Advertisement Ripple is in collaboration with Common Prefix to specify and formally verify key components (Payment Engine and the Consensus Protocol) of XRP Ledger . In December, the first formal specification of XRPL Payment Engine, which powers every XRP transfer and multi-asset payment on the network, was published. This marks an important step toward bringing formal verification, the standard used in banking and aerospace, to core XRPL components. Privacy, programmability coming Last September, Ripple unveiled its road map for XRP Ledger, which emphasized two themes shaping the next stage of XRPL’s institutional DeFi evolution: the launch of a native lending protocol and the integration of zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) for privacy. XRPL’s next major push is programmable privacy, with ZKP integrations already being explored. The first use case: confidential multi-purpose tokens (MPTs), scheduled for launch in Q1, 2026. MPTs will support privacy-preserving collateral management, a key requirement for institutional adoption of tokenized finance. As regards programmability, progress has been made on extensions, which allow developers to add small, verifiable pieces of code to native features such as escrows or AMMs. Smart Escrows introduce a new layer of programmability to the existing Escrow primitive. #Ripple News #XRPL #XRP