Too Little, Too Late? XRP Ledger Debuts Smart Contracts and EVM Sidechain in a Crowded Market

Key Takeaways:

• XRP Ledger plans to launch smart contracts and the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) Sidechain by 2025.
• It leverages the Axelar multichain platform to enable transactions between the XRPL and over 55 other compatible blockchains.
• Ripple's announcement sparked criticisms from the XRP community regarding potential network modifications.

The XRP Ledger, the blockchain network powering Ripple, one of the pioneering blockchain platforms, has revealed its plans to launch smart contracts and the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) Sidechain by 2025.

This move aims to bring advanced programmability to the XRP Ledger's developer ecosystem in response to the growing demand for diverse use cases and flexibility, particularly in Ripple's chain, which facilitates cross-border transactions for institutions and individual users.

Development of Smart Contracts and EVM Sidechain on XRP Ledger

The Ripple (XRP) project emphasized that this initiative aims to offer developers, builders, entrepreneurs, and users greater customization options for a wide range of applications. This will ultimately speed up innovation and appeal to developers interested in harnessing the expanded capabilities of the XRP Ledger.

This Sidechain is close to being developed live on Devnet, an XRP Ledger testing network that allows developers to test their applications and software changes in a controlled environment. It is also being developed in collaboration with Peersyst, a company specializing in creating software solutions to facilitate the integration and adoption of blockchain technology in businesses.

Meanwhile, the XRPL EVM Sidechain will leverage the Axelar multichain platform as the bridge and enable transactions between the XRP Ledger and over 55 other compatible blockchains, including Polygon, Binance Smart Chain, Solana, Avalanche, and many more.

Related: Ripple CEO Unvails XRP Ledger Stablecoin “Real USD”

“This setup allows dApps to utilize both XRP Ledger features and EVM smart contracts concurrently,” the team stated. “Wrapped XRP (eXRP) serves as the native asset and gas token, ensuring secure and efficient cross-chain transactions.”

Delayed Smart Contracts: A Less Revolutionary Step?

These recent advancements on the XRP ledger emerged after numerous platforms had already established themselves in the smart contracts ecosystem. Platforms such as Ethereum, Chainlink, Solana, TRON, Immutable, and Polkadot lead the way in this arena.

Even though Ripple is one of the longest-standing platforms globally, its entry has generated positive sentiments. Nonetheless, the delayed introduction of smart contracts for its XRP Ledger seems less revolutionary, given the oversaturation of smart contract platforms.

However, given the platform's widespread real-world adoption and popularity over the past decade since its launch, there is room for expansion and for it to become a better alternative to the current smart contract platforms.

Some of the unique aspects of Mainnet programmability that may differentiate it in the smart contract and EVM market include being permissionless, requiring no amendment to deploy a smart contract, easy customization of native features, ease of learning for new developers, and minimal impact on performance and infrastructure provider costs.

However, it is too early to conclude whether this move represents a truly groundbreaking initiative or if these somewhat unique offerings might attract more users, adopters, and developers to the platform than other market leaders.

Ripple CTO Addresses Community Concerns

It's worth noting that this announcement has sparked multiple discussions and criticisms from the XRP community, with some accusing the platform of being able to modify the public network. This prompted David Schwartz (JoelKatz), Ripple's CTO, to post a tweet clarifying the issues.

Seems like there’s confusion over the programmability blog post we put out yesterday, so let me clear a few points up:

Ripple simply cannot (and absolutely doesn’t want to) unilaterally change the XRP Ledger. The blog post is Ripple saying that we see the value in bringing…

— David "JoelKatz" Schwartz (@JoelKatz) September 4, 2024

According to him, the blog post is Ripple's way of expressing that they recognize the value of introducing programmability to XRPL Mainnet and the ongoing developments with the EVM Sidechain and are now prioritizing this. Additionally, they will release a design proposal for community review.

He said,

“Ripple simply cannot (and absolutely doesn't want to) unilaterally change the XRP Ledger.”

Ripple is arguably one of the blockchain companies facing intense regulatory challenges, primarily from the American Securities and Exchange Commission, led by longtime crypto-skeptic Gary Gensler.