David Schwartz, the CTO of Ripple, chimes in about the confusion over Ripples blog post, related to smart contracts and programability on the XRPL. He writes:
Seems like there’s confusion over the programmability blog post we put out yesterday, so let me clear a few points up:
Ripple simply cannot (and absolutely doesn’t want to) unilaterally change the XRP Ledger. The blog post is Ripple saying that we see the value in bringing programmability to XRPL Mainnet (in addition to what’s already happening with the EVM Sidechain) and are making this a priority now, and we’re committed to putting out a design proposal for community review. Instead of coming out with a proposal already baked, our intent was to be transparent and show where we’ll now be focusing internal resources and priorities, do the due diligence, and come back to the Community with our thoughts.
Why the sudden change? As many pointed out, I focused on the fixed functionality of the XRPL and EVM sidechain at Apex earlier this year. I genuinely didn’t see how smart contracts on Mainnet would work without turning XRPL into a different chain. I had convos in the past few weeks with Orchestra Finance, and others in the community that made me recognize that programmability on Mainnet can work if key challenges are addressed (ledger bloat, TPS loss, and bugs/exploits). I think the best way to mitigate these risks is to take small steps that lead in the right direction, and it's great to have the historical data of how hooks has worked on Xahau. I fully acknowledge that plenty of smart minds came to this conclusion that programmability makes sense for Mainnet much earlier.
Why now? Besides the above, we also felt it made sense to share our thinking ahead of the XRP community gatherings in Korea and Japan this week, because these are important in-person chances to discuss programmability! This is honestly the only reason for the timing…there is no hidden agenda.
We have, and will continue to be transparent about what we’re thinking. We’re committed to:
- Regular community calls
- Design reviews with external community members/stakeholders
- Blog posts explaining considerations, thought process and any designs we propose.