Ripple Abandons Cross-Chain Bridging Amendment Amid Lacking Demand
Ripple is recommending that the XRP Ledger community withdraw an amendment focused on bringing cross-chain bridging to the network. The XChainBridge (XLS-38) amendment was designed to provide a native bridging framework for the XRP Ledger, allowing assets to move between the XRPL mainnet and connected sidechains with the help of 'witness servers'. However, Ripple now says that there is little evidence of developer demand.
The company initially decided to use Axelar's network for the EVM Sidechain in June 2024. At the time, it said it would continue leaving XLS-38 available for a community vote. Now, Ripple claims that the primary use case motivating XLS-38's development is fully addressed by the Axelar integration.
Ripple believes maintaining the dormant implementation has become a liability and that removing XChainBridge would allow developers to eliminate over 10,000 lines of code. However, this decision can be reversed if devs building around XLS-38 present compelling use cases to convince Ripple to change its mind.