XRPL’s ecosystem is maturing. Apart from payments, XRP is starting to support tokenized assets, ETFs, and other financial instruments, which potentially opens the door to additional decentralized finance (DeFi) capabilities.
Ripple chief executive officer Garlinghouse recently took to the X social media network to ask about new uses for XRP as DeFi grows.
"With new DeFi protocols and apps emerging for XRP, what other possibilities for the network should be discussed?" the executive asked his followers.
Staking for XRPL?
J. Ayo Akinyele, head of engineering at RippleX, recently stirred up a lively discussion revolving around the network's future.
XRPL’s original purpose was to move value efficiently, but it has evolved to handle tokenized assets, real-time liquidity between markets
Moreover, XRP Spot ETFs (like Canary) are live, and more are coming, signaling institutional adoption.
Hence, the question is whether or not XRPL could possibly support native staking.
Staking typically incentivizes validators in PoS chains. XRPL is different, so staking would require careful design to align with its principles.
There are multiple challenges, including a need for a source of rewards and, fair distribution mechanism. It also must preserve low fees, speed, and validator equality
Schwartz’s evolving vision
As reported by U.Today, David Schwartz, Ripple CTO, has also been thinking about XRPL’s next steps:
According to Schwartz, any DeFi or staking implementation must not compromise speed, low cost, or trust-based governance.
He has proposed a two-layer consensus model (the inner layer for handling frequent ledger updates) and the outer layer (for handling governance and amendments).
Dan Burgin
Vladislav Sopov
U.Today Editorial Team