Peersyst and RippleX have announced their Ethereum-compatible sidechain launch
On Monday, Peersyst, a Blockchain software company, and RippleX announced that on the XRP Ledger’s devnet, Peersyst had launched an Ethereum-compatible sidechain. Devnets, also known as developer networks, is separate from a blockchain’s main network, which is used to test and troubleshoot new technologies.
As devnet is used to test, which means that the new Ethereum-compatible sidechain for XRPL is now live, but it is in an early phase. This new sidechain uses a Solidity coding language, which is previously used to program applications and smart contracts on the Ethereum network. Solidity code language is also used on the Ethereum Virtual Machine blockchain Avalanche. But, this sidechain has a difference from Ethereum as it uses XRP as its native currency.
In September 2021, David Schwartz, the CTO of Ripple, said that an EVM-compatible chain on the XRPL was in the works. At that time, Schwartz wrote on Twitter that sidechains make it easy for developers to customize the chain for their use cases. Moreover, he had said that bringing Ethereum smart contracts to the XRPL could lower the barriers to entry for developers. The developers could build powerful DeFi apps with cross-chain interoperability, he had said.
Now, Ripple is looking to do more than enable Ethereum-based smart contracts. In January, it launched its own NFT protocol, the XLS-20, for the XRPL on its devnet. It was a move that could allow developers to launch NFTs directly onto the XRPL mainnet. On 13th September, the XLS-20 technology was approved to launch on the XRPL mainnet but is not yet live.
A Ripple spokesperson told Decrypt that they are optimistic about the eventual adoption of XLS-20 and are thankful the community is so dedicated to a secure and trustworthy rollout. Moreover, he said that security is fundamental, especially at a time when industry-wide exploits have become a regular occurrence.
There was a question why not make XRPL’s mainnet EVM-compatible? On Monday, in a blog post, Mayukha Vadari, Ripple’s Software Engineer, argued that such a move could undermine its efficiency, scalability, and security.
