According to him, such a server would significantly improve the reliability and connectivity of critical components of the ecosystem. Although Schwartz is the company’s CTO, he noted that this is a personal project and not affiliated with Ripple as a company. The major goal is to support the network’s decentralization and reduce dependency on any single point of failure.
As noted by Schwartz, although his new server would be production-grade and strive for high uptime, XRPL nodes should never rely exclusively on a single hub, which is XRPL’s foundational principle of distributed trust. However, in his view, this type of infrastructure, independent yet dependable, could quietly but effectively increase XRPL’s performance and resilience.
To bring this vision to life, Schwartz selected an AMD 9950X CPU paired with 256GB of RAM, supported by a 2TB boot SATA SSD and a dual 2TB NVME SSD setup configured in software RAID 0 for NuDB performance. The server is also equipped with a 10GB unmetered internet link and runs on Ubuntu LTE. Interestingly, Schwartz also mentioned that the machine is already up and running in a New York City data center. It is synchronized with the XRPL and currently contributes to the network’s connectivity, although it is still undergoing stability tests.
A portion of the node’s slots would be reserved for high-priority connections such as validators and hubs, while the remaining slots would be open to the public on a best-effort basis. This hybrid access model is designed to strike a balance between offering reliable performance for mission-critical nodes and allowing wider participation in the network.
