Over the weekend, XRP Ledger announced a crucial milestone in advancing programmability on the network.
As reported, the XRP Ledger Smart Contracts feature is now available for developers to explore and test on AlphaNet, a dedicated development network. This milestone, the first of its kind, introduces native layer-1 smart contract capabilities to the XRP Ledger.
As the discussion about the introduction of smart contracts on XRP Ledger continues, RippleX software engineer Mayukha Vadari has stepped in with an important clarification. This comes as an X user claimed that smart contracts have been running on the XRP Ledger mainnet in the last two years.
Vadari clarified that this was a different network, which introduces its own set of complications.
The X user was likely referring to Hooks, a smart contract proposal for the XRP Ledger. Vadari reiterated the essence of native programmability on the XRP Ledger, adding, “Programmability is useful on other neighboring chains, like the EVM Sidechain (and squidrouter helps with this), but it’s not as useful as having it native – e.g. you don’t get that atomicity.”
Last September, Ripple and the XRP community revealed a commitment to bring permissionless programmability to the XRP Ledger (XRPL). It outlined two key developments as regards this: the introduction of native smart contract capabilities on the XRP Ledger mainnet and the XRPL EVM sidechain.
Ripple said at the time that existing smart contract standards, such as Hooks from XRPL Labs, represented an important foundation that could be relied upon to enhance mainnet capabilities.
The key considerations for XRPL mainnet’s programmability include being permission less, with no need for an amendment to deploy a smart contract and easy customization of native features.
The XRPL EVM sidechain operates on layer 2, so any smart contracts running on the sidechain are not directly integrated into the XRPL.
