Ripple is preparing to activate a significant upgrade to the XRP Ledger with the launch of its long-awaited Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)-compatible sidechain. According to David Schwartz, Ripple’s Chief Technology Officer, the sidechain will go live in the second quarter of 2025, enabling Ethereum-based decentralized applications (dApps) to run within the XRPL ecosystem.
This major integration will target developers seeking to build DeFi projects outside of Ethereum. By adding EVM support, XRPL will be interoperable with Ethereum tools, smart contracts, and token standards, and it will enable dApps to be deployed on XRPL without leaving the XRP ecosystem.
Through Axelar, a cross-chain communication protocol, the new EVM sidechain will be linked to the XRPL mainnet. Wrapped XRP will be the native gas token on the sidechain, keeping XRP at the center of transaction activity on both networks.
Following its entry into testnet, the EVM sidechain has received a great deal of attention in the developer community. Today, there are 87 builders actively developing applications and tools, and they are becoming increasingly confident in the XRPL in its capacity to facilitate decentralized finance solutions.
The devnet testing started in October and has indicated good stability and scalability. This new launch will mark a new change in the Ripple roadmap as it will explicitly aim at the DeFi market, which Ethereum-based solutions have so far dominated.
The primary consideration of Ripple in the real world of finance has not changed. This was highlighted by Schwartz himself in the Apex 2025 event when he said XRPL was not meant to copy all the functionality of blockchain but rather address particular issues in financial infrastructure.
XRPL Gains DeFi Potential Through EVM Compatibility
The XRP Ledger is now EVM-compatible, which means that it can become the center of decentralized finance applications. The developers will be capable of creating and deploying lending protocols, decentralized exchanges, yield farming applications, etc., using the Ethereum toolset, but now on XRPL.
This development enables Ethereum dApps to port to XRPL with ease, lowering the entry point to developers and compelling cross-chain development. Wrapped XRP gas usage also means that value is held captive in the XRP token economy.
Network activity has been one of the strong points of XRPL already, with more than 3.3 billion transactions having been processed and more than 6 million active wallets. These measurements place the XRP Ledger as an active and scalable basis of future DeFi activity.
Ripple just upgraded its infrastructure, which will unleash new liquidity streams and generate more developer activity in the XRP ecosystem. Uniting the Ethereum functionality with the speed and cost-efficiency of XRP, Ripple will provide an attractive DeFi alternative to the current Ethereum-based solutions.
