Ripple has announced its plans to boost the programmability of XRP Ledger.
It plans to introduce smart contracts as soon as next year. For now, this functionality remains in the research phase.
XRPL Hooks will serve as the foundation for introducing smart contracts on the mainnet.
Ripple will focus on ensuring permissionless, easy learning and customization while also minimizing the impact to performance and cost of infrastructure. Still, there are very few details about how Ripple plans to actually implement smart contracts on the XRP Ledger.
As reported by U.Today, Matt Hamilton, Ripple's former director of developer relations, stated that smart contacts were in development back in December 2022.
In 2020, former Ripple CTO Stefan Thomas revealed that there was a working prototype for smart contracts on the XRP Ledger, but it was shelved due to usability and security concerns. They also struggled to pick a programming language for writing smart contacts.
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On top of that, the XRPL EVM sidechain in the near future. The sidechain, which was originally announced by the RippleX team in June, will make it possible for developers to create new decenralized applications (dApps) that will be capable of combining the best features of XRPL and EVM.
While commenting on the announcement, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse said that the foundations of crypto infrastructure serving real-world use cases are steadily becoming more robust by the day.
Earlier this year, the XRP Ledger also added a new Automated Market Maker (AMM) functionality. The introduction of the feature is supposed to make the XRP Ledger a more important player within the DeFi space.
