XRPL Unveils Proposal for Cross-Chain Bridge: Details

In a tweet, Emi Yoshikawa, Ripple’s VP of Corporate Strategy and Operations, shares her excitement about the newly published XLS-38d, a standard proposal for the cross-chain bridge, which she says might significantly expand potential use cases for XRPL.

The Github document for the XLS-38d proposal was authored by Mayukha Vadari, a RippleX software engineer, and Scott Determan.

Check out XLS-38d, a standard proposal for cross-chain bridge! 👀

This would significantly expand potential use cases for XRPL.

Community members, please share your feedback!! https://t.co/t7CQdsUkVY

— Emi Yoshikawa (@emy_wng) February 23, 2023

Mayukha Vadari shared this on her Twitter page: “We just published an official XRPL Standards spec for cross-chain bridges.”

An approach for interoperability is the use of cross-chain bridges, which are protocols that allow communication between blockchains. To facilitate the transfer of value, cross-chains like Allbridge, Multichain and Apex have already integrated with blockchains, including XRPL, Ethereum, Avalanche and others.

XLS-38d proposal

The bridge, as defined in the XLS-38d proposal, connects two blockchains: a locking chain and an issuing chain (also called a mainchain and a sidechain). A cross-chain transfer moves assets from the locking chain to the issuing chain or returns those assets from the issuing chain back to the locking chain.

It proposes two means of building a bridge: first, setting up a new sidechain, which is building an XRP-XRP bridge. The strategy involves using sidechains, a parallel network that gains value from analyzing data from and exchanging assets with the main chain.

According to an interview by Mayukha Vadari in August 2022, RippleX was hard at work on a production release of sidechains that would run parallel to the XRPL mainnet if adopted by the XRP community.

In October 2022, RippleX announced the launch of the first XRPL EVM-compatible sidechain.

The second way of building the bridge is through an IOU-IOU bridge. In this case, any two networks that have an IOU-IOU bridge between them should already have an XRP-XRP bridge between them, as a sidechain will need XRP for account reserves and transaction fees.