Ripple Abandons XChainBridge Amendment Amid Axelar Adoption
Ripple has announced its intention to withdraw support for the XChainBridge (XLS-38) amendment on the $XRP Ledger, citing a lack of demand and unnecessary complexity.
The amendment aimed to provide native bridging capabilities for cross-chain transactions between the mainnet and connected sidechains using witness servers. However, with the adoption of the Axelar network as the EVM Sidechain, Ripple claims that XLS-38's primary use case is no longer necessary.
Ripple initially supported XLS-38 but decided to use Axelar for the XRPL EVM Sidechain in June 2024. Now, they argue that maintaining the dormant implementation has become a liability, requiring over 10,000 lines of code to be eliminated.
The decision could still be reversed if developers can present compelling use cases that justify the continued support for XLS-38.