Ripple is preparing performance upgrades for the XRP Ledger (@XRP) $XRP in 2027, according to Vijay Khanna (@vjkhannaripple), the company's director of engineering. "We have big plans for performance improvements lined up for 2027," Khanna said.

Khanna confirmed the plans in a November 8 X post. He did not disclose specific technical changes, new throughput targets or deployment dates, so the scope of the work remains unclear.

Network Speed Under Scrutiny

The comment follows criticism of the ledger's transaction speed. Critics have compared the network's roughly 1,500 transactions per second with the average daily load of Visa.

Ripple's engineers appear to be moving away from a race on raw throughput. The strategy involves directing retail micro-traffic to Layer-2 solutions such as Dassie (Interledger), while the main Layer-1 focuses on large-value flows for banks and institutions. That approach is consistent with the aim of supporting larger financial transactions without overwhelming the base network.

Lower Validator Costs and a Wider Roadmap

Ripple is also working to reduce the infrastructure demands placed on validators. Since the release of xrpld 3.3.0, node memory usage on the XRP Ledger has dropped by as much as 23%. RippleX developer Valentin Balaschenko explained that the issue was not a memory leak but the memory allocator retaining memory the application had already freed. Hussein Zangana of the XRPL Foundation noted real-world savings of 13% to 23%. Earlier reports on the release cited a lower figure: a 10% to 15% reduction in memory usage.

Looking ahead, the XRP Ledger Foundation's recently published 2027 roadmap outlines 24 development items involving smart contracts, lending, derivatives and institutional infrastructure. Reported items include native smart contracts (XLS-101), lending pools, options and repo markets. Khanna has not confirmed which performance improvements will accompany those proposals, or whether a specific increase in transactions per second is planned.

The roadmap also points to heavier demands on the network. These developments could introduce additional demands on XRPL infrastructure, particularly when applications require more complex processing than basic asset transfers. How far the 2027 work offsets that load will depend on details Ripple has yet to publish.

Sources

Coinpaper: Can XRP Ledger Handle Institutional Payments at Scale?
Bitbase: XRP Ledger Node Memory Use Drops Up to 23%
Coingape: Ripple Releases XRP Ledger 3.3.0 Upgrade