Ripple Seeks Withdrawal of XChainBridge Amid Operational Challenges

Ripple is seeking to withdraw XChainBridge from the XRPL voting process. The company cited weak developer demand and maintenance costs, as well as its own operational expertise being exceeded by running a large public bridge.

The design of XChainBridge uses witness servers to verify activity across chains and support asset transfers. It was intended for private, permissioned, and experimental sidechains, alongside the public EVM network. However, Ripple argues that expanding witness networks increases coordination demands and complicates accountability.

Ripple has chosen Axelar to handle the XRPL EVM Sidechain's main bridging needs, citing its network of over 75 validators, shared signing system, and regular security-key rotation. The company points out that Axelar has experience connecting more than 55 blockchains, which reduces operational complexity.

Ripple cannot withdraw the proposal without wider network support, but is urging the XRP Ledger community to do so through community review and validator upgrades. This would allow developers to remove over 10,000 lines of code from xrpld.