Nik Bougalis, the director of engineering for Ripple Labs,’ will be leaving the crypto company after spending close to 10 years. His exit makes him the most recent crypto long-time serving executive to exit from the space.
The director of engineering disclosed this via a Tweet on his official Twitter page on October 22. According to the tweet, he said: “my decade-long stay at Ripple has been amazing. I worked on a project I liked and towards a goal I trusted. But that journey will be coming to an end in a few days.”
Additionally, the Ripple executive revealed that he would not be entering a blockchain project or company anytime soon. “my next move? I’ll talk about it when I feel it’s the right time, but I am NOT entering another blockchain project/company,” he added.
Nik Bougalis has a background and loads of experience in cryptography and software engineering. While at Ripple, he worked on open-source code projects for Ripple’s Ledger, commonly called XRPL.
One of Ripple’s new projects that Nik Bougalis worked on is the XLS-20 amendment which will lead to the introduction of Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to Ripple Ledger. Although the project has experienced a setback because of a few initial bugs that need to be handled, the project’s upgrade is now ready to be launched in early November.
Ripple Without Nik Bougalis
The director of engineering went further to reveal that he believes the Crypto company will do well even without him as an executive member. According to Nik Bougalis, “Ripple’s development in the crypto industry isn’t dependent on any one person.”
He added, “So I’m sure the firm will do well. They have lots of passionate and talented individuals at Ripple.” The Blockchain industry has recently witnessed several top individuals exit their positions this month.
The chief financial officer (CFO) of leading NFT platform OpenSea, Brian Roberts, stated on October 7 that he is leaving the company. Polkadot co-founder Gavin Wood on October 21 also ended his stay at blockchain infrastructure company Parity Technologies.
His reason for leaving is that it was not a position where he saw himself getting “eternal happiness.” Other top executives who decided to follow the same path within the past few months include MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor, Genesis Trading CEO Michael Moro, FTX US President Brett Harrison, and Kraken CEO Jesse Powell.
On a positive note, Ripple recently got a huge win in its long-lasting legal case with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) over alleged securities violations. Ripple’s General Counsel Stuart Alderoty stated on October 21 disclosed that the company has finally gotten its hands on valuable files that could enhance its defense against the financial watchdog.
