Ripple Unveils Bold Plan for XRPL Programmability: Smart Features

February 26, 2025 by Mishal Ali

Key Takeaways:

• Ripple has unveiled its vision for permissionless programmability on the XRP Ledger (XRPL).
• The plan includes introducing “Smart Features” to enhance existing XRPL building blocks.
• Smart Contracts will also be integrated, providing greater flexibility for developers.

Ripple has taken a significant step towards expanding the XRP Ledger’s (XRPL) capabilities by introducing permissionless programmability. In a detailed blog post, the Ripple Extensibility Team outlined its vision and released two specifications to support the initiative. The goal is to maintain XRPL’s core strengths, efficiency, reliability, and simplicity, while enabling developers to build custom on-chain business logic.

For this, Ripple and the XRPL community conducted thorough studies on options for a Virtual Machine. In comparing options, it was agreed that utilizing WebAssembly, or WASM, for this role would be best. This is due to it being a perfect blend of flexibility, performance, and integration coupled with minimal disruptions for existing XRPL users and validators.

The program is designed to fill a niche for programmers who prefer custom solutions compared to needing broad community approval. The proposal entails permissionless programmability in a way such that code written by users can be executed on the XRP Ledger without approval by a Unique Node List (UNL).

Introducing Smart Features for XRPL

A new solution, which Ripple calls “Extensions,” allows users to extend existing XRP Ledger functionality in place of traditional smart contracts. Extensions are little pieces of code added on top of XRPL blocks, which provide a mechanism for allowing custom logic, all without compromising network core functionality.

A prime example of these first implementations is “Smart Escrows.” Time-based release conditions, as well as password-based release conditions, currently exist in XRP Ledger escrows. With Smart Escrows, custom release conditions, which can extend beyond time and passwords, such as credential-based escrow, trustless trading, and cascading escrows for selling and purchasing houses, can be made possible.

Along with escrows, Ripple views Smart Features as extending other XRPL facets, including Smart AMMs for custom trading strategies, Smart Accounts for security, and Smart Tokens for regulatory purposes. This is a plan of refining existing features in an effective way, all of which is keeping XRP Ledger secure and performant.

Smart Contracts and XRPL EVM Sidechain

Ripple is extending programmatic functionality to XRP Ledger using a system of “pseudo-accounts” and a new transaction type, “ContractCall,” which gives Ethereum-like programmatic functionality. The XRP Ledger EVM Sidechain allows for integration of Ethereum apps on XRPL, making it easier for Solidity developers to deploy codebases with minimal adjustment. In early 2025, Ripple will release Smart Escrows, iterating on these in due course for a secure transition toward a programmatic XRP Ledger.

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