Ripple Welcomes Back Ethan MacBrough, Ex-Coil Lead Scientist

Communities of XRP Ledger and Ripple are excited about the announcement of an unusual addition to the Ripple team. Seasoned blockchain researcher Ethan MacBrough is back to his company after almost three years at Ripple-backed start-up Coil.

Ethan MacBrough rejoins Ripple: VP Emi Yoshikawa

According to the statement shared by Ripple’s VP of Corporate Strategy and Operations, Emi Yoshikawa, on Twitter, Ethan MacBrough, mathematician and blockchain researcher, is getting back to Ripple.

以前Rippleのリサーチ部門で働いていて、その後、Coilに移ったあのイーサン（@emacbrough)がRippleに再入社しました！2018年のSlash Tokyoのサイドイベントのレセプションにイーサンが来てくれて、一躍有名になってましたよね笑（懐かしい！）…

— Emi Yoshikawa (@emy_wng) March 24, 2023

Yoshikawa recalled the moment MacBrough joined Ripple Inc. for the first time. Per the timeline on his LinkedIn profile, he worked as Research Intern and then became Resarch Engineer at Ripple. 

Ethan MacBrough is a mathematician and software engineer. He received a bachelor’s degree from private Reed College in Portland, Oregon. As of press time, he did not confirm his change of role.

Starting from December 2020, he worked as lead scientist at Coil, a Ripple-backed start-up. Coil was a Web3 monetization platform that supported various cryptocurrency assets, with a focus on micropayments.

As covered by U.Today previously, the platform was launched in 2019 by former Ripple CTO Stefan Thomas and Evan Schwartz, the co-creator of the Interledger protocol.

Coil platform ceased operations on March 15

Ripple supported the platform with a 1 billion XRP grant and $4 million seed funding. However, in February 2023, the platform announced that it was preparing to sunset its operations.

Its team announced that March 15, 2023, was the last day of Coil activity. However, its developers and enthusiasts are able to continue working on integrating crypto payments into real-world use cases with Interledger protocol:

In the near future, there will be full-featured Interledger wallets powering web monetization and many other use cases.

XRP is changing hands at $0.42, up 2.6% up in the last 24 hours. Yesterday, it spiked to levels unseen since early November 2022.