During the recent Apex 2025 event, David Schwartz, chief technology officer at Ripple, stated that XRP Ledger’s (XRPL) Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)-compatible sidechain will go live in the second quarter of this year.
The sidechain will make it possible for developers to deploy Ethereum-based decentralized applications (dApps) within the XRP ecosystem. This could drive substantial DeFi adoption for the XRPL ecosystem.
The sidechain, which is currently in the testnet stage, has attracted 87 new contributors who are working on various apps and tools. Testing went live on the devnet back in October.
The sidechain will connect to the XRPL mainnet via Axelar, with wrapped XRP being used as gas.
The XRP Ledger has now processed more than 3.3 billion transactions with 6 million active wallets.
"It wasn't trying to do everything, but it was focused on real-world financial use cases," Schwartz said during the event.
Vladislav Sopov
U.Today Editorial Team