Ripple’s president, Monica Long, recently gave a very enlightening interview to Coinbase Japan concerning the recent updates on Ripple in the wake of the former’s victory against the SEC. She spoke about Ripple’s very aggressive movements: launching its new stablecoin, Ripple USD (RLUSD), besides introducing Ethereum-compatible sidechains to the XRP Ledger (XRPL), which all indicate an important shift in the focus on scalability, liquidity, and programmability.
The Role of Ripple USD (RLUSD) in Ripple’s Future
Monica Long, in the interview, stated that Ripple’s RLUSD will become part and parcel of its future financial ecosystem as part of their settlement solutions aimed at speeding up the efficiency of cross-border transactions. RLUSD is entirely backed by U.S. dollars and cash equivalents, thus making it entirely transparent and stable. Ripple engages financial institutions and institutional investors in mainstreaming the use of RLUSD within their liquidity frameworks and, importantly, on the decentralized exchange system on the XRP Ledger.
Long also relieved fears that attention within the payments space would drain from XRP, saying only that they complement one another. For smaller market-cap assets, XRP will continue to be used as a core component, while RLUSD provides a strong, stable vehicle for larger settlements. This segregation will enable both assets to coexist and drive greater activity and liquidity on the XRPL.
Expanding XRP Ledger with Ethereum Compatibility
Long debated and awaited, the most revolutionary step would be an extension of XRP to Ethereum-compatible sidechains. Developers on the Ethereum platform would be given the right to develop and deploy on XRPL using XRP as a gas token, but the sidechain would be EVM-compatible, hence the best of both worlds: programmability as offered by Ethereum, coupled with the scalability of the XRP Ledger at low transaction costs.
Long continues to explain how this integration unlocks new financial solutions and decentralized applications on the XRPL for developers to get started in a safe space. Ripple also plans to build on from this first development, further ways to expand programmability on the XRPL through features like Hooks that bring native smart contract capabilities to the network.
XRP is poised to make big moves ahead, as Monica Long clearly charted out in her recent interview. RLUSD will complement their payment services, while Ethereum-compatible sidechains will bring a whole wave of developers into the XRP Ledger.
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