A fresh bridge has opened between the XRP Ledger and the broader blockchain world. On the sidelines of the Ethereum Community Conference (EthCC), the Axelar Foundation said its network is now carrying wrapped XRP between the XRP Ledger’s mainnet and a brand‑new EVM‑compatible sidechain built by Peersyst with support from Ripple and the wider XRPL community.
The link went live the moment the sidechain debuted, giving developers an immediate route to more than 80 blockchains and letting the sidechain use wrapped XRP as its native gas token.
Transfers travel over Axelar and surface in a clean interface run by Squid, sparing users the usual juggling act of multiple wallets and bridges.
For builders, the appeal is two‑fold. They can keep writing smart contracts in Solidity, the language of choice on Ethereum, while tapping the XRP Ledger’s decade‑old infrastructure, fast block times, modest fees and a validator set that has survived the harsher moments of crypto’s boom‑and‑bust cycles.
More than six million XRP Ledger wallets now sit one click away from DeFi applications that normally live only on EVM chains.
Several projects have already staked a claim. Strobe is rolling out a money market for lending and over‑collateralised borrowing. Securd is chasing passive‑income seekers with a lending model that finances leveraged DeFi positions.
Vertex, best known for its derivatives engine, plans to bring capital‑efficient trading to the network. Under the hood, Blockscout is providing a block explorer while Goldsky handles indexing and data feeds.
