TL;DR:
Ripple CTO emeritus David Schwartz moved to close a recurring governance debate, responding on X to renewed social media questions about whether XRP Ledger transfers can be blocked or centrally controlled. His bottom line was that no single actor can stop a valid XRP transaction, including Ripple itself, as long as the payment satisfies the protocol’s rules. Schwartz framed the issue as consensus, not discretion, and pointed to one narrow exception: a transaction only becomes stoppable if the network’s users collectively change what “valid” means under consensus. The exchange was publicly dated February 26, 2026.
There is no means to prevent valid transactions unless users agree to change validity rules to make them invalid. Anyone who wants to escrow tokens can lock them in escrow. Once an escrow expires, anyone can unlock it.
— David 'JoelKatz' Schwartz (@JoelKatz) February 26, 2026
Schwartz’s clarification hinges on the network’s shared definition of validity. In his framing, there is no built-in freeze switch that an institution, developer, or validator can pull against compliant activity. A transaction can be blocked only if it stops being valid, which would require users to agree to change the validity rules and make it invalid under network consensus. That turns “blocking” into a governance decision rather than operational power. For teams building on XRPL, the message is simple: ultimately compliance with current rules is the routing key, not a relationship with any single entity.
He reinforced the point by detailing escrow as protocol-locked execution, not discretionary approval. Any participant can place XRP into escrow, and the release path is set upfront by predefined conditions. Once the escrow period expires, the funds can be unlocked according to those terms, and Schwartz stressed that anyone can unlock it after expiry because the ledger enforces the result automatically. In other words, conditional flows exist, but they are executed by protocol logic rather than a Ripple sign-off or any central authority’s green light. The design removes gatekeeping from escrow lifecycle events for participants.
The clarification arrived amid another round of centralization accusations. Schwartz described a claim from Cyber Capital founder Justin Bons, arguing Ripple’s Unique Node List could enable institutional control, as “objectively nonsensical.” He compared it to claiming a majority Bitcoin miner could arbitrarily create a billion new coins. His governance model is that validators coordinate but cannot rewrite the ledger. Validators cannot force honest nodes to accept double-spends or censorship, he said. A coordinated majority could halt consensus from honest participants’ perspective, but it cannot rewrite balances or fabricate XRP. That keeps valid payments effectively unstoppable.
