Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse has expressed his enthusiasm for the forthcoming enhancements to the XRP Ledger (XRPL), which aim to improve its programmability and utility.
Garlinghouse’s comments follow a Monday blog post by Ripple, which outlined the company’s commitment to expanding the programmability of the XRP Ledger. Notably, this move aims to equip developers, entrepreneurs, and users with the tools needed to create more customizable applications, thereby accelerating innovation within the ecosystem.
The blog post outlined two key advancements that will enhance the XRPL’s programmability: the introduction of native smart contract capabilities on the XRP Ledger Mainnet and the upcoming deployment of the XRPL EVM Sidechain. The latter is expected to go live in the coming months and offer Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatibility, which will allow developers to use familiar tools and programming languages.
Notably, these developments are set to create a robust, versatile ecosystem capable of supporting a wide range of applications, from tradfi to cutting-edge DeFi solutions. Ripple further emphasized the importance of these upgrades.
“Programmability on the XRP Ledger will improve through two key developments: the introduction of native smart contract capabilities on the XRP Ledger Mainnet, which is currently in the research phase, as well as the introduction of the XRPL EVM Sidechain, expected to go live in the coming months,” the blog stated.
In a tweet on Tuesday, Garlinghouse echoed these sentiments, expressing his excitement about the future of Ripple.
“With new programmability in the works for the XRP Ledger (something the XRP community has rightly been asking for) and the growing opportunity for Ripple’s enterprise products to serve crypto-native customers, the foundations of crypto infrastructure serving real-world use cases are steadily becoming more robust by the day,” Garlinghouse stated.
On the other hand, David Schwartz, Ripple’s Chief Technology Officer, also weighed in on the upgrades, expressing his excitement about the possibilities the new native and sidechain programmability could bring to the XRP Ledger.
When asked by a community member about the use of sidechains, Schwartz responded, “I’ve recently become convinced that it’s possible to come up with a proposal for smart contracts on XRPL that is small and safe enough to deploy on mainnet without significant risk to things like transaction price stability and performance for payments.”
That said, by integrating Ethereum-compatible smart contracts via a new sidechain, Ripple is positioning the XRPL to support more complex applications and drive greater interoperability across multiple blockchain networks, particularly in 2025.
