Ripple Chief Technology Officer David Schwartz proposed introducing federated sidechains to enable implementation of smart contracts adjacent to the XRP Ledger.
- Ripple has resisted smart-contract capabilities because of the risk of compromising the focus on payments, Schwartz wrote in a blog post Monday.
- Demand, however, has increased with the growth of decentralized finance (DeFi).
- Federated sidechains for the XRP Ledger would enable developers to implement native smart contracts that interact with XRP and the XRP Ledger, while keeping the ledger "lean and efficient," Schwartz said.
- They would allow for more specialized projects to be built using Ripple's functionality without compromising the security or efficiency of the ledger because they would be built on sidechains acting as their own blockchains.