Jed McCaleb Left Ripple Years Ago – Is the Conflict Still Ongoing?

Hinting at a crypto project, the post said:

imagine spending more on lawyers than developers and calling it progress

Community OGs immediately recognized it as a dig at Ripple, which was sued by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in December 2020. As of February 2025, the legal battle still isn’t over.

Build on Stellar’s post wasn’t just random criticism – it reflected an old, deep-rooted conflict.

In 2011, Stellar co-founder Jed McCaleb began developing the XRP Ledger alongside David Schwartz, Ripple’s CTO, and Arthur Britto, who later co-founded the digital asset infrastructure company PolySign.

In 2012, they launched the project as an alternative to Bitcoin. Later, Chris Larsen, now Ripple's executive chairman, joined the company.

McCaleb left Ripple in 2014 and co-founded Stellar with Joyce Kim. Stellar is a decentralized blockchain with its native cryptocurrency, XLM.

While Ripple focuses on international money transfers between banks, Stellar emphasizes decentralized open-source development. However, both networks provide fast and low-cost transactions.

Why Did Jed McCaleb Leave Ripple?

Beyond differing approaches to technology, other conflicts also arose within the team. In a Quora discussion, David Schwartz wrote:

Jed had a long string of bad ideas that Ripple’s Board of Directors refused to implement. So Jed started Stellar based on those ideas.

Schwartz also mentioned that Ripple and McCaleb had multiple legal disputes because McCaleb wanted to sell his XRP quickly, but Ripple tried to stop him.

McCaleb’s Side of the Story 

McCaleb’s response to Schwartz made it clear that his main conflict was with Chris Larsen.

I left because I made the mistake of bringing Chris on as CEO and it ended up being untenable to work with him for a variety of reasons.

At the same time, McCaleb said he had enjoyed working with Schwartz and was disappointed by his comments. He also claimed that Ripple had repeatedly attacked his character and family and that he had faced pointless lawsuits.

In the end, he added:

Stellar and Ripple are going after two completely different use cases as far as I can tell so I don't understand the continued hostility.

Why the Ripple vs Stellar Feud Is Back

It’s unclear who runs the Build on Stellar account or who posted the message directed at Ripple, but it has caused quite a stir.

McCaleb is now primarily focused on the aerospace industry, regularly sharing updates about his startups.

Supporters of both Ripple and Stellar continue to argue about which project is better and who was right back in 2014: McCaleb or the others on the Ripple team.

Lawyer John Deaton criticized McCaleb for publicly attacking Ripple, despite making billions through XRP. He even suggested McCaleb might have assisted the SEC in its lawsuit against Ripple.

In response to claims that the account didn’t belong to McCaleb, Deaton just said the project being discussed should’ve been tagged.

So, McCaleb may not have realized the old dispute had reignited.

Meanwhile, both XRP and XLM have achieved success and are among the top cryptocurrencies by market cap. XRP ranks 4th with over $139.7 billion, and XLM holds 14th place with a market cap of more than $9.8 billion.