One of the oldest projects in the crypto space, Ripple, announced the launch of smart contracts for its XRP Ledger. Given that the XRP Ledger was first launched in June 2012, this was a long-awaited and significantly overdue feature requested by the community. However, as the saying goes, it is better late than never.

While one might assume that adding smart contracts would involve enhancing the main chain, Ripple’s approach is somewhat more “complex.” They intend to implement, what they call, “Dual Advancements in XRP Ledger’s Programmability.”

In practical terms, this means they aim to deploy smart contracts on the XRP Ledger Mainnet in the future, as they are still researching this capability. Meanwhile, they plan to introduce a side chain and link it to the XRP Ledger via a bridge.

Discussions about integrating smart contracts into the mainnet XRP Ledger have been ongoing for years. However, progress in this direction has been slow. Currently, the situation remains unchanged, with smart contracts on the XRP Ledger mainnet still in the research phase. It could potentially take another several years for the project to launch them.

However, in an effort to gain relevance, Ripple has opted for a shortcut by launching the XRPL EVM Sidechain, developed in collaboration with Peersyst. According to Ripple, this sidechain will introduce Ethereum Virtual Machine compatibility to the XRP community, enabling developers to use familiar tools and languages, thus broadening the XRP Ledger’s global appeal. The sidechain is expected to launch in several months.

The chain will be connected to the XRP Ledger through the Axelar bridge. This setup will enable decentralized applications to utilize both XRP Ledger features and EVM smart contracts concurrently. Additionally, the team plans to use Wrapped XRP (eXRP) as the native asset and gas token for the sidechain. 

Essentially, after years of development and hundreds of millions of dollars invested, the project has resulted in the launch of a relatively straightforward Ethereum sidechain developed by a third-party developer. Given the vast array of existing Layer 1 and Layer 2 chains, it is hard to envision Ripple attracting a significant number of developers with this solution.

Additionally, it is worth noting that not everyone was pleased with the recent smart contracts announcement. One of the developers in Ripple’s ecosystem, XRP Labs, had been working on a sidechain called Xahau, which also offers smart contract functionality for Ripple. They were dismayed by the announcement, concerned that it might render their years of work largely irrelevant. 

“It is therefore with mixed emotions that we read Ripple's recent blog post, seemingly embracing the concept of L1 smart contracts - the very idea we proposed and championed years ago. While we're glad to see this shift in perspective, we can't help but feel that this realization comes frustratingly late and at a cost to those who have been driving innovation in the ecosystem.”

Ripple was one of the early cryptocurrency projects and probably the first to build a cult-like following. However, as is the case with 99.99% of early crypto projects, it raised too much money, its founders likely lost motivation, and it failed to develop anything truly useful for the Web3 ecosystem.

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