According to Denis Angell, a software engineer at XRPL Labs and Xahau, 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 XRP Ledger, merging EVM-style contracts with XRPL’s native features and transactions.
Just like other chains, Smart Contracts will allow developers to build decentralized apps on XRP Ledger.
The first extension, “Smart Escrows,” which will allow developers to write custom release conditions to unlock an escrow, is targeted for a Q1, 2026 release.
XRPL Smart Contracts mark a new shift for programmability on the ledger. Unlike traditional approaches, the new XRPL Smart Contracts do not require any UNL approval and allow direct access to all XRPL features and primitives.
The smart contracts will also allow efficient execution with support for multiple programming languages, on-chain ABIs — human-readable interface definitions stored directly on the ledger.
Numerous possibilities will be unlocked in use cases by the smart contracts, which include cross-chain bridges allowing for integration with new bridging protocols; DeFi protocols, including derivatives, perpetuals and advanced trading systems; token utilities allowing staking rewards for issued tokens; governance systems in on-chain voting and proposal mechanisms; gaming being applicable in decentralized game logic and asset management and marketplace logic allowing custom rules for NFT marketplaces.
This week, XRP surpassed 100 million Ledger, with the current Ledger count at 100,076,708.
On November 5, onchain analytics platform, Santiment reported a surge of 21,595 new XRP wallets created in a 48-hour span, the highest level of growth in 8 months.
X, a crypto influencer notes that XRP Ledger has an uptime of about 99.999% proving its exceptional reliability with total downtime of about 74 minutes in over 13.4 years of its inception.
Since launching in June 2012, the XRP Ledger has been down only twice on November 25, 2024 for about 10 minutes due to a software bug and on Feb 4, 2025 for about 64 minutes from a consensus freeze.
