Ripple developers have been listening to feedback and suggestions to expand the XRP ledger or XRPL to integrate smart contracts and other functions.The latter has become a major feature of the product Booming Decentralized Finance Space, but the creator of Ripple claims that different solutions are better for payment-centric XRPL.
This solution Appearing in the form of what they call “joint side chains”, that is, parallel ledgers, can support the experimentation and professional interests of developers, whether it is DeFi or other use cases. The use of side chains can make the main XRPL streamlined and efficient, while at the same time expanding the functionality of the broader XRP ecosystem by providing interoperability for native smart contracts and other functions.
In order to promote this interoperability, the creators of Ripple proposed a “federalizer” software that connects to XRPL ainnet at one end and one or more side chains at the other end. Each runs as its own blockchain, but they use XRP as the main asset; in addition, the federal system supports the transfer of XRP and issues tokens between them and the main ledger.
Verifiers that operate at least one sidechain will be eligible to run federated software. In order to integrate this new software, Ripple said it only needs to make “two trivial changes” to the operation of the XRPL network. New features on the XRPL server software will allow it to run in the sidechain, but these features will not be enabled on the mainnet. David Schwartz, CTO of Ripple, further outlined the joint system:
“Each side chain has a’trust’ account on the XRPL mainnet. This account can hold assets on XRPL on behalf of the side chain user. The account will use multi-signature or threshold key, and the signer is the verifier of the side chain. Each sidechain verifier operator will register a signature key for signing transactions on XRPL; therefore, the verifiers of the sidechain can jointly create transactions to manage the sidechain’s mainnet account.”
Each side chain can choose to use XRP as its native asset or have its own new native asset. In the former case, the sidechain’s account on the mainnet will contain the total trust XRP holdings used on the sidechain. In the latter, the mainnet account of the sidechain can be used to issue new native assets on the XRPL mainnet.
Schwartz stated that the advantages of the joint system are its low-risk approach, horizontal scalability, simple support for new blockchain experiments, and a long-term vision that can adapt to the evolving tool set and continuous feedback on the development of new side chains.
As mentioned earlier, sidechains have become a popular method for blockchain developers Try a new solution to the scaling problem And integrate the new functions into the established blockchain ecosystem such as Ethereum.