The Algorand Foundation has tapped Nikolaos Bougalis, a veteran cryptographer and former Ripple engineering lead, as its new chief technology officer, the company said in a press release Monday.

Bougalis, who spent nearly a decade guiding development of the open-source XRP Ledger, will lead Algorand’s engineering efforts and help advance its 2025 technical roadmap.

Algorand’s ALGO (ALGO) token was trading 2.6% higher over 24 hours alongside a generaly rally in crypto prices.

Algorand’s roadmap, unveiled in July, focuses on decentralization, Web3 adoption, enterprise use cases, and cutting-edge cryptography. Bougalis is expected to play a key role in aligning the foundation and Algorand Technologies around those goals.

“Nik brings a wealth of experience in distributed systems, cryptography, and blockchain, as well as a demonstrated ability to foster collaborative development communities,” Algorand Foundation CEO Staci Warden said in the release. “He will help us double down on decentralization, performance, and security.”

Bougalis will be based in the U.S. as the foundation seeks to expand its footprint among domestic enterprises and institutions looking for compliant, scalable blockchain infrastructure.

His background in security and cryptography is expected to strengthen Algorand’s work on privacy, quantum resistance and scalability.

Algorand, launched in 2019, aims to offer instant finality and low fees for builders creating projects in payments, identity, supply chain, and asset tokenization. The ecosystem now includes millions of users and a global network of developers using familiar programming languages like Python and TypeScript.